Symposiums and conferences: a peer helper’s journey to improvement
- Raffles Peer Helpers
- Oct 16, 2019
- 8 min read
As Raffles Peer Helpers, we always seek to provide better support to our peers, and one way of doing so is by actively participating in symposiums. It is here where we get to hear invaluable insights from experts, discuss with others for a clash of ideas and gain new perspectives. Recently, some Raffles Peer Helpers attended two symposiums, which are Singapore Mindfulness Conference and SMU Peer Helpers Symposium respectively.
The Singapore Mindfulness Conference is held on 24th and 25th August, at the University Cultural Centre of the National University of Singapore. The 2-day conference, themed “Mind-body medicine, behavior transformation & Neuroplasticity”, covered mindfulness in many aspects, with multiple plenary sessions for participants to attend according to their interest. The different themes of the plenary sessions include: “Mindfulness-medicine for anxiety, depression, insomnia & pain”, “personal organisation and performance”, “Improving cognition and slowing down aging”, as well as “Mindful parenting and positive behavioral transformation”. Of which, I attended the first two.
The most interesting sharing, in my opinion, was by Prof Ruchika Prakash, titled “Effects of Mindfulness Training on the Ageing Brain”, which introduced the idea of attentional control, which is the ability to select and amplify task-relevant information while ignoring irrelevant, interfering information, and the idea of mind-wandering, which is the shift in attention away from the task at hand and towards internal thoughts. The thoughts can be categorized into 3 types: on-task thought, task-related interference, and task-unrelated interference, with the extent of mind-wandering increasing down the list. She shared how studies has shown that mindfulness meditation shows promise in reducing mind-wandering and enhancing attentional control, and the benefits of mindfulness on the cognitive ability as one ages. The promise of mindfulness is yet to be tapped on, and has left us with many new areas to explore.
The other presentations were insightful too, and the experience cannot be summarized in a few brief words, but it was definitely a fulfilling one. The conference had a lot of participants who shared about their personal story with mental health issues during the Q&A segments of the conference. Seeing how what we are learning in Raffles Peer Helpers Programme to improve mental health has real implications on the lives of people and their loved ones just adds another layer of meaning.
One Raffles Peer Helper, who prefers not to be named, shares his personal takeaway from the conference.
“I felt that the Singapore Mindfulness Conference was a good introduction for us on what mindfulness actually is, as it is not a very well-known term. In short, it means for us to focus on the moment and live in the moment. I feel that this is a very important aspect of our lives that we have neglected, being ever-busy with chasing for success — be it monetary or otherwise. As a result, we have neglected to enjoy the process of reaching our goals, and enjoy what we do in our daily lives.
In addition, mindfulness has also been shown to improve our physical and mental wellbeing, and even has the potential to treat diseases. This serves as another reason as to why I feel we should practice mindfulness in our daily lives, as it is both beneficial to us and also makes us happy. Even though integrating it into our daily routines may be hard, its long-term benefits may be worth the short-term “pain”.”
The SMU Peer Helpers Symposium was held on 11th October, and a team of interested peer helpers attended the symposium. Ethan Yeo (20S03I), a peer helper from PHP batch ’19, shares with the writer more about the symposium.
Summary of SMU Peer Helpers Symposium
The symposium consisted of a keynote speech by Dr Matthew Wawrzynski, followed by sharings by Professor Timothy Clark, Professor Chong Siow Ann and Professor Paulin Straughan.
Dr Matthew Wawrzynski is currently an Associate Professor and recently served as the Coordinator of the Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education programme and Director of the Centre for Adult and Higher Education at Michigan State University. He shared with us the results of The National Peer Educator Study (NPES), which was conducted in the US. The study measured the motivation for becoming peer educators, changing behaviours, learning outcomes and training of peer educators. It was found that 98% of peer educators were motivated by the desire to help others, 96% by the prospect of gaining additional knowledge and 90% by the desire to be more involved in college. 85% of peer educators believe role modelling has the greatest impact to motivate change. Several top outcomes of peer educator courses include that of 80% of peer educators being more knowledgeable about campus resources, 75% being more knowledgeable about general health issues and 90% feeling themselves to be a part of the school community. After training, 81.4% of peer educators reported very strong or strong skills for time management, compared to only 50% before training, while 90% of educators effectively demonstrate skills leading a group, compared to only 47% before training. Dr Wawrzynski also touched on the trends in training of peer educators, which include training on mental health awareness, bystander intervention, sexual assault, relationships, violence and stress management. However, it was interesting to note that some common topics that peer educators receive no training in include vaping, eating disorders, self-harm prevention and tobacco use. In addition, 80% of peer educators are females, which poses problems in reaching out to male sufferers of mental illnesses.
Next, Professor Timothy Clark, the Provost of SMU, shared about student support in universities, also raising key statistics of the prevalence of the negative impacts of mental health illnesses. He shared that 91% of females compared to 82% of male students faced difficulties making new friends, dealing with relationship issues, as well as financial issues when transitioning to university, while 29% of all students experience clinical stresses in college. Furthermore, many cases of mental illnesses are not reported, leading to a lack of action to prevent the worsening of these issues. He suggested a whole university approach, comprising good leadership, staff support, anticipation and prevention, early intervention as well as collaborations and partnerships, emphasising the importance of projecting the appropriate culture to ensure that students know the various avenues from which they can seek help.
The next speaker was Professor Chong Siow Ann, a Senior Consultant and Vice Chairman Medical Board (Research) at the Institute of Mental Health. He shared about various mental health conditions, such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), Generalised Anxiety Disorder, etc. MDD is characterised by feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt, significant weight gain/loss, increase/decrease in appetite, insomnia or hypersomnia. Bipolar disorder leads to one having inflated self-esteem, decreased need for sleep, being more talkative than usual, increasingly distracted and involvement in risky investments such as buying sprees and risky business expenditures. Generalised Anxiety Disorder causes restlessness, muscle tension and sleep disturbance while OCD is manifested in the fear of contamination or dirt, needing things orderly and symmetrical, unwanted thoughts and harmful behaviour. The compulsions are excessive and often not realistically related to the problem, typically with regards to cleaning, washing, orderliness, counting and demanding reassurances. Next, negative impacts of alcohol abuse include drinking in situations leading to physical injury and failure to attend to responsibilities at work, school or college. Interestingly, Malays have a higher percentage of OCD cases but fewer cases of alcohol abuse. People who are divorced or separated are more likely to experience Generalised Anxiety Disorders or Major Depressive Disorders. Prof Chong also shared that people are seeking help faster, narrowing the treatment gap of most disorders. However, there are over 800,000 suicides each year, which translates into a death every 40 seconds, and the number of male suicides is approximately twice that of female suicides. For every suicide, at least 6 suicide survivors are left behind. The most commonly recurring conditions were found to be OCD and MDD. Risk factors of mental conditions are alcohol and substance abuse, history of trauma or abuse, family history of suicide and impulsive behaviours. It was found that for near-lethal suicides, ¼ of them considered the act for less than 5 minutes! Warning signs are physical changes in appearance and Prof Chong urged us not to be afraid of “putting the idea in someone’s head”. He emphasised that this is a misconception and that it is instead better to talk about suicide in the open. Finally, he ended his sharing by pointing out that suicide is the “last taboo topic” and that we should be proactive in identifying warning signs and helping people facing these conditions.
The last speaker, Professor Paulin Straughan, is a Professor of Sociology (Practice) and Dean of Students at Singapore Management University. Her sharing was mainly about stigma against mental illness and how to tackle this stigma. She started by mentioning how stigmatisation often occurs when bizarre behaviours happen as the only way to escape punishment is to plead insanity. Headlines are sensationalised by the press and the outcome of the trial is often not reported so accusations of mental illness are left hanging. She mentioned that subjective reality is one where meanings are socially constructed and that illness behaviour is learned behaviour, as it is often difficult to draw the line between an actual mental illness and simply being stressed or feeling “down”. Negative stigmatisation is also entrenched by fear and a knowledge gap. She gave the example of the common usage of the words “mad” and “crazy” in our daily interactions, which leads to negative associations of mental illnesses with these vocabulary. As she aptly said, “Psychiatrists are the only medical specialists who virtually never look at the organ they treat.” The implications of this subjectivity are that there is abuse of this “mental illness” label, adding to the mystification of mental illnesses and social stigmatisation. Furthermore, much prejudice stems from ignorance. A significant barrier to help-seeking is that insurers exclude medical illnesses in their insurance policies. Hence, Prof Straughan proposed that measures can be taken to improve medical insurance coverage, employment without prejudice and integration of people with mental conditions into our community. In the social domain, steps should be taken to eradicate social stigmatisation, while the economic domain comprises the right to medical insurance, education, employment and housing. Legislation-wise, these individuals can be protected from unfair prosecution. She concluded by emphasising that mental health literacy is necessary and that there is a need to introduce sufferers to other fellow sufferers to give them hope.
In conclusion, each speaker mentioned different aspects of mental health, giving key statistics and raising insightful suggestions to tackle social stigmatisation against mental illnesses.
Ethan also shares his reflection about the symposium:
Through this peer helper’s symposium, I have learnt many new things about mental illnesses. The symposium covered many different mental illnesses, ranging from generalised anxiety disorder and alcohol abuse to obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). The symposium also had a good mix of technical and practical information. Technical information includes statistics on the benefits of peer helping courses on peer educators, such as the fact that 81.4% of peer educators report very strong or strong skills for time management after training, compared to only 50% of peer educators before training. Practical information include that of how to structure peer helping programmes to help educators best as well as how to tackle the stigma that commonly exists against mental illnesses.
Furthermore, the statistics presented were rather surprising and eye-opening. For instance, Malays have a higher percentage of OCD cases but fewer cases of alcohol abuse, often due to their religion, which does not permit them to consume alcohol. There are over 800,000 suicide cases each year, which translates into a death every 40 seconds. These eye-opening statistics thoroughly caught my attention and made me realise the importance of addressing mental illnesses to curb these negative impacts.
Overall, the symposium was useful in providing different perspectives on mental illnesses and raising awareness of the common stigma against them. As Professor Paulin Straughan mentioned, stigmatisation often arises from sensationalisation of news regarding crimes committed by people with mental illnesses. It is interesting that the outcomes of the trials are often not reported, meaning that readers are left with the impression that most or even all people with mental illnesses are dangerous to society, which feeds the stigma against mental illnesses.
In conclusion, the symposium was very insightful and useful in exposing me to the different facets of mental illness as well as the various ways to tackle the stigma, while the speakers were engaging and informative. Overall, it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience!
Thank you for reading thus far and I hope that you too, have gained a little insight into becoming a better peer 🙂 Although the programme is coming to an end for our batch, we hope that you can remember that help is always available and we are always here for you. The kind counsellors will also continue to be here to support you at the Raffles Guidance Centre.
Yang Wanshen
Raffles Peer Helper 2019.
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