The Future of Mental Well Being FIRESIDE CHAT

“Mental health is at the core of our humanity.” - António Guterres, UN Secretary-General

October 10 is World Mental Health Day.
Mental health is a clear and urgent issue - it is the next major epidemic. Stress, anxiety, and depression have become the defining health issues of our time – in addition to cancer, hypertension, heart disease, diabetes and auto-immune among other chronic diseases that plague modern society. Stress – especially chronic stress – has been identified to be a significant contributing factor to most of not all of these chronic illnesses. It is an epidemic that plagues many professionals – which adversely impact not just productivity but quality of life and long-term mental well-being. For many life increasingly feels like a treadmill that they can’t get off, while others experience a growing sense of loneliness, isolation and disconnect despite living in an age of digital super-connectivity.

Research from publicly available data, private sources and personal experiences clearly demonstrate some clear and present gaps and pain-points in the mental health scene here in Singapore: insufficient available resources and an overloaded public mental healthcare system, a general lack of awareness on the importance of stress management and priorities for self-care and mental wellness (although this is slowly changing), a lack of available tools and channels for timely identification and pre-emptive diagnosis, data-poor islands of point-based care, and a sore lack of a personal life wellness strategy in the public discourse that makes prevention a priority (over intervention) and mental wellness a life priority.

And now with the ongoing pandemic that seems likely won’t be going away anytime soon, the situation has become dramatically more dire. It’s high time that we rethink - re-imagine - a new strategy for our mental health and well-being, individually and collectively.

Come and join our panel of practitioners and champions of mental well-being - to explore what new possibilities exist - the future of mental well-being!