Mental Health and Higher Risk Populations

Higher Risk Population #1: Caregivers The first population I want to zoom in is caregivers of stroke patients. And I want to talk about stroke patients mainly because the ageing population is a big problem. We have a"silver tsunami" currently, whether it is Singapore or Japan, many of the developed countries actually, we are actually facing this problem. Stroke has been ranked the top causes of disability for many years according to WHO. I will introduce you to some terms like incidence and prevalence.

The basic definition of Mental Health according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) is when an individual has stressors in life and that individual can work productively, that usually is not considered a psychiatric issue. Points to note: When this ability and impairment of function occurs, that is when treatment and intervention are to be conducted. In all parts of the world, mood and anxiety disorders are the most common mental illnesses. Psychiatry is not just depression or anxiety.

Some people say that it is difficult to speak over the screen, but I think that it is better than nothing and I think that some of us are willing to improve their technology, perhaps to see what are some of the problems that the patient's face, or the doctor's face. I think that there is a market for it, to see if there are any loopholes. I encourage people to keep an open mind, especially since we are at the starting stage of these technologies, to kind of embrace them and give them a try to see whether it works out.

This is something we need more data on. But if you look at the mental health campaigns or the communities for the help of psychiatric patients, those stigmas usually come from not just family or friends, but also in the workplace. In IMH for example, there have been a lot of efforts to try to debunk some misconceptions on psychiatric illnesses. One of the famous examples I like to share is if you look at Ellen DeGeneres or JK Rowling, we may never be as successful or productive as them. But they have actually had depression sometime in their life.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of the services in Singapore are stressed and manpower is short. It's a strain to the healthcare system and IMH is our largest psychiatry hospital in Singapore. We do have some manpower that is deployed elsewhere, but we still have general practitioners in polyclinics or in private practice who can refer them to IMH if necessary. So that means that they are always open for the very severe cases, whereas, for the milder cases, from what I understand, there will be a phone call made to existing patients.