Parliamentary Replies
Clinical Depression
Name and Constituency of Member of Parliament
Assoc Prof Paulin Tay Straughan, Nominated Member of Parliament
Question
To ask the Minister for Education (a) whether his Ministry tracks documented cases of clinical depression and attempted suicide among school-going students and, if so, what are the possible triggers, and what is being done to alleviate the incidence; and (b) how does his Ministry manage these cases in general and, in particular, whether the receiving school is informed when a student moves from primary school to secondary school.
Response
MOE pays careful attention to the mental well-being of our students and closely monitors the state of mental health in our students, including depression. Clinical depression can affect people across social spectrum and age groups, but it is far less common among children and adolescents.
Suicidal acts are a symptom of a complex problem for which there is no one single cause. The main contributory factors among student suicides are relationship problems with family and peers, failure to meet self and parental expectations, dysfunctional family patterns, as well as the occurrence of mental illness, including clinical depression.
MOE actively works with the Health Promotion Board (HPB) and mental health professionals, including psychiatrists and clinical psychologists from the Child Guidance Clinic (CGC) of the Institute of Mental Health (IMH), to implement a comprehensive approach to build resilience against stress and prevent suicides. Our approach comprises three key elements: (i) building protective factors in our students, (ii) identifying at-risk students for early support, and (iii) channelling students with depressive disorders and/or suicidal tendencies to the appropriate psychological, medical and other necessary resources for intervention.
Our schools help students build protective factors through the provision of social and emotional learning (SEL). SEL helps students acquire a set of social and emotional competencies, which will enable them to better understand themselves, interact effectively with others and cope with life’s challenges, thereby inoculating them against depressive and suicidal thoughts and behaviours. This is further augmented by the Mind Your Mind (MYM) programme, a school-based mental health education package, targeted at primary and secondary school students. The package, jointly developed by HPB and MOE, covers topics such as stress and anger management, building positive self-esteem and depression.
To help students in need of support, every school has a tiered-referral system to facilitate the early identification and extension of help to them. At the first tier are our teachers who are trained to identify students who show signs that they are troubled and provide the necessary basic support, including referring students to the second tier of support formed by the school counsellors. Complex cases are referred to the third tier of support, which can involve guidance specialists from MOE, mental health professionals at the CGC, or the relevant social service agencies. Pertinent information about students, including support rendered to them by counsellors, is handed over from the primary to secondary school.
While schools can support and educate our youths, the support from the home is also paramount. Parents and family members can help their youths set realistic expectations for themselves and develop the resilience and strength of character which will enable them to ride the challenges of life.