BTS: Mental Health Awareness and Suicide Prevention

TDLR: - I spent months brainstorming on an angle to cover a topic on mental health awareness and suicide prevention - finding a balance between the sensitivity of the topic, being informative and the urgency of it all

- I spent (more) months interviewing, transcribing, writing (and editing it again and again)

- All my work went down the drain as my laptop reformatted (PSA: backup, email it to yourself, put it in the internet somewhere)

- After all the crying, started from scratch (but realized that all my transcripts were saved in the cloud - hallelujah)

- Published, just for the website to shut down

- Months of not knowing what to do with my article

- Finally, republishing it.

An excerpt if you decide not to read the whole article:

Point is: I went through a lot to get this article out. As I clicked "publish", I couldn't help but to feel nervous about the response I will receive. One of my close friends reassured me that i'm only feeling this way because it meant so much to me, that i'm putting myself out there. And I am. I hope this serves as an encouragement to everyone who feels helpless and voiceless - when pain is gripping your heart and you find it difficult to breath, and you have no one to turn to - please, please, know that I am rooting for you. Please, please, please; persevere.

Prague, 2018

When I was in high school, I received a message from a friend, one of those thank-you-for-being-my-friend-and-goodbye messages. I called her and we spent the next couple hours crying about life, about her hurting herself, about how she would stop trying to kill herself. 

We now have monthly, if not weekly, reports about suicides. Most of us have probably already grown numb to the idea, in fact, a lot of people can casually comment things along the lines of “please do the world a favour and jump off a building”, on Facebook posts regarding the most pettiest of matters.  There was an incident where a man attempted to kill himself at KLCC, and the way people responded were disgusting - they were bothered by how their shopping experiences were disrupted, they called him crazy (the lack of proper education on mental issues is a whole other topic), they weren't empathetic at all.

It’s sad. And I’m not about to take a selfie of me ugly crying because you’d just have to trust me when I say it hurts (me), it hurt the family and loved ones of the victims, it hurts (or it will hurt) the nation (economically and psychologically). 

There were a series of cases happening that sparked the urgency to publish something about mental health awareness and suicide prevention - at that time (early 2018), there were also a growing number of cases happening specifically in colleges and universities. I can’t help but to think to myself, “what if this happened in my school? could I have done something about it? could I have helped this person? what if it was my friend?” 

I then spent months having conversations and brainstorming about an angle to cover this story; firstly because of the sensitivity of this topic - I would want to spark the right thought processes (because if you think 13 Reasons Why was a good show that addressed mental health issues, you are so wrong - once again, conversation for another day); secondly, it had to be “newsworthy”, how can I frame the story in such a way that other sites haven’t already? Thirdly, how is it relevant to Malaysians; lastly, how can it bring about action and not just a mere “this is what you need to know about the stats and facts of mental health” article. I suppose the structure of the article wasn’t portrayed to sound urgent, because as a writer for a news portal (where it was previously published), I was encouraged to keep my emotions aside. But before I even proceed to talk about the entire journey, let me assure you: this is urgent, we need to do something about it now. 

My classmates and i celebrating our last paper (don't worry, we picked them up and recycled them after) - just reminding myself that there's a lot to celebrate in life

I prayed about it a lot, I read up on the topic a lot, I talked to many people - friends from my Christian community, friends who were engaged in Befrienders, lecturers, friends who struggled with their mental well-being. I attended talks, Facebook messaged several NGOs. I struggled, because I didn’t want to impose my values on anyone, but I needed it to be important, I needed a call to action. 

Perhaps it was the wisdom of God to have coordinated everything so perfectly and placed me where I needed to be that allowed me to churn out these thought processes, and I am grateful. I was in a university that strongly emphasized on happiness and emotional well-being, being passionate about education as a whole (another story), I realized that the role of educational institutions are very very important in supporting its students and cultivating the right thought processes. How are we educated to take care of our mental well-being? 

Then began my actual writing journey. Upon getting the general concept approved by my editor (who was patiently guiding me through my emotional thought processes), I scheduled interviews - the qualitative process allowed me to develop on my initial ideas more: there is a huge role of policy makers - to insist on a well-developed syllabus to provide children a wholistic growth, in giving funds for research, on providing relevant training for teachers and lecturers. 

I had three interviews transcribed, I even obtained a written-statement from the Press Secretary of the former Ministry of Education. And then something tragic happened (horror music appears). 

My new phone was being a little bit wonky, since it was still under warranty, i decided to bring it to the workshop. They recommended for me to backup and reformat my phone. I did. As I was trying to recover all my data from my laptop, my not-so-trusty laptop kept lagging and crashing. This happened several times. There was something wrong with my external storage. I lost every single data from my phone AND laptop in one day (and at that time I had a lot of research for my ongoing dissertation stored in my computer). I cried in the mall (huhu). For some stupid reason, I sent the final draft of the article to my editor via WhatsApp web (instead of via email... note to self: always email, always leave a digital footprint), and he doesn’t have a copy of it because his phone went wonky as well. In other words, my entire article, along with its facts and statistics, were all gone. 

I struggled, again. If this is what God wanted me to do, why is it so difficult? Why hasn’t it been smooth-sailing? I was so clear of the goals and objectives of this, but more importantly, it’s not about me - the people of our country are suffering and we’re not doing anything about it. Someone is feeling hopeless, they feel like they’re a burden to their loved ones, they’re in pain - and we don’t seem to care. That the society is horribly sick, and it breaks my heart to feel so helpless. I believe that God heals, and God's plans are over the nation, but I need to do my part, I need to bring attention to this issue; not in a “here’s some facts and stats” manner, but “hey, we’re hurting, we need to do something about it”; and I say “we”, because the nation will suffer, we are losing talents who have the potential to grow and contribute to the nation, ignorance is not bliss. I decided to start from scratch (huhuhu). 

As I opened up my Apple notes to start again - hallelujah, the notes I took down during the interviews were still there! I didn’t have to re-interview anyone or tried to recall from memory; I just needed to write the article itself. That was an assurance from God, it’s going to be okay. Long story short: I (finally) published the article, received RM150 for the basic pay + commission from social media reach and donated it all to Relate Malaysia. 

Totally irrelevant photo of me ft bunny

Fast forward a few months, I was told that the website would shut down because it wasn’t gaining as much reach as they hoped. I’m left struggling once again - what’s the deal, God? (And perhaps until now, I still don’t know). But there still is a need to do something about it, maybe I’ll keep writing, or coming up with something until the ministry(ies) respond. And if they shut my blog down for whatever reasons, I’ll just find another means to keep talking about it. 

Point is: I went through a lot to get this article out. As I clicked "publish", I can't help but to feel nervous about the response i will receive - will i receive hate mails (cries)? will it reach the people it needs to reach (and i trust that God will lead it to the right people)? will it reach enough people (and this might come across as really shallow but having more people aware of these issues will hopefully lead to bigger implementations, faster)? One of my close friends (who journeyed through all my - omgomgomgomgomg should I publish it / howhowhowhowhowhowhow?) reassured me that i'm only feeling this way because it meant so much to me, that i'm putting myself out there. And I am. I hope this serves as an encouragement to everyone who feels helpless and voiceless - when pain is gripping your heart and you find it difficult to breath, and you have no one to turn to - please, please, know that I am rooting for you. Please, please, please; persevere.