Debate on President’s Address: Ng Ling Ling on mental health, mentoring and motherhood

Walking into a GP clinic is way less intimidating than walking into a psychiatric section of a hospital to seek help for mental conditions such as depression and anxiety, said MP Ng Ling Ling. Speaking in Parliament on Thursday (Apr 20), she urged the Government to speed up augmenting mental health treatments and support which are mostly delivered through hospital psychiatric wards by specialists. It should provide more training to family doctors to make them the first line of care for mental health, as well as enable them to handle such conditions. The Government should also help to provide integrated care at lower cost for patients. At the same time, it should empower the community with the skills and knowledge to handle mental health and fund initiatives from the community. Ms Ng highlighted mental health as one of the three “M”s for the Government to focus on. The other two are mentoring and motherhood. On mentoring, she stressed the need for corporate and business leaders to do more for young people. She said the business sector can proliferate a stronger culture of mentoring. Turning to motherhood, she urged the Government to press on with support for parents and families through flexible work arrangements, even for those in frontline services and intense workplaces where such arrangements seem difficult. She said bolder human resource policies are needed, such as training staff to manage work stress during peaks and surges in the workload.