Public Consultation 2021
Explore our key findings:
- Methodology
- OPPi Opinion Groups
- COVID-19 and Mental Health
- Common Ground Sentiments
- Mental Health Divides
- Barriers to Accessing Mental Healthcare
- Recommendations
Introduction
In 2021, we ran the #AreWeOkay poll ran from 26 March 2021 to 30 April 2021, which was intended to spark a conversation on mental health among Singaporeans amid the pandemic as part of public consultation 2021. A total of 561 responses were gathered throughout this poll period.
This poll was launched on OPPi, an AI-powered crowdsourcing platform with proprietary analytic and statistical capabilities and involved a series of demographic questions and statements to which participants could respond to, including topics on perceptions of mental healthcare, vulnerable communities, COVID-19 on mental health, and mental health and society. Our findings provide deeper insight into issues of access, affordability, and quality of mental healthcare in Singapore a year into the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings suggest a need to further support and address the pressing concern surrounding mental health more holistically.
What happens next: Thematic Focus Groups & Panels
SGMHM is committed to furthering our conversation on mental health with the community through a webinar series focusing on key issues that have been uncovered from PC2020 and the #AreWeOkay OPPi poll. These will focus on topics of access, affordability and quality of mental healthcare, vulnerable populations (e.g. LGBTQ+ individuals, people with disabilities, individuals from low-income households, healthcare workers), individuals who have been impacted by suicide, and policymakers in the mental healthcare landscape of Singapore.
Watch this space!
PUBLIC CONSULTATION 2020
Public Consultation 2020
Explore our key findings:
Introduction
As an effort to document the experiences and feedback of all Singaporeans on the access, affordability and mental healthcare and support in Singapore, Nominated Member of Parliament Anthea Ong and her team of volunteers launched the first-ever public consultation on mental health, for the purposes of supporting her on the Budget 2020 debates. From December 2019 to January 2020, we have received 395 responses from ordinary Singaporeans of all walks of life. These respondents include people with lived experiences of mental health issues, caregivers and mental health professionals.
Our public consultation looked at accessibility, affordability and quality (AAQ) of mental healthcare in Singapore, with various inter-connected focus areas across: (a) settings: schools and workplaces; (b) vulnerable communities: migrant workers, differently-abled, LGBTQIA+, and low-income elderly; and (c) specific concerns: confidentiality, suicide, emergency services, and trauma.
In the course of our work, we were mindful to look (i) beyond mental health conditions to thinking about its systemic and cultural roots, honing in on preventive upstream work and promoting mental wellness; (ii) beyond people with lived experiences of mental health conditions to the role of everyone across the whole of Singaporean society: from individuals, to families, to employers, to and communities and civil society, to government; and (iii) how our systems and policies can better meet the unique individual needs towards better mental health and wellness.
This public consultation is not an official study aligned to rigorous standards of academic research. It is entirely volunteer-run, and the responses we received are derived from online media and social media platforms where the electronic form for the consultation was shared. Apart from supporting Anthea in the Budget 2020 debates, the public consultation is not affiliated with any political, public, private or social service interests; including the Government, VWOs, business enterprises or political organisations.
Within this website, aggregated data from the public consultation is published, with individual anonymised quotes supporting the statistics. The team has taken the decision to not publish the entire dataset from the consultation as (a) some respondents have indicated that they do not consent to individual responses being shared in any form (b) although some respondents have indicated they consent to their responses being shared as anonymised quotes, no explicit consent was provided for sharing their responses on this particular website (c) to maintain the safe space we have created for our respondents to share their honest feedback openly with us.
In the spirit of transparency, we are open to reviewing individual requests for more information. Any information released will be subject to the consent of all respondents involved. For these requests of information, you may contact us through the “Contact” section of this website.