IMPACT 0278: RAISING AWARENESS FOR GENDER AND CULTURAL NUANCES IN MENTAL HEALTH

Alvona Loh, 28, is a young medical doctor. With the help of two friends, she created WEquality, a mental health campaign now supported by the US Mission to ASEAN. Through the campaign, she hopes to raise awareness of gender-specific mental health issues, such as toxic masculinity for men and pressures to look good for women. Today, she shares more about the work that she does.

I co-founded a mental health campaign, WEquality, which aims to discuss gender and cultural nuances in mental health issues. Along with two teammates who have a background in public health, we started by applying the skills on advocacy learnt from a women’s leadership academy that was funded by the US Mission to ASEAN. Subsequently, we founded the campaign with seed funding from the academy to highlight cultural and gender nuances related to mental health.

Part of the campaign involves working with an influencer who acts as our campaign ambassador to interview people and their loved ones –  both men and women alike, who have mental health struggles – such as eating disorders and depression.

In the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health issues have taken the spotlight in view of unemployment, restrictions and social isolation. As women in an Asian society, we hope to kick start discussions on issues that we observe in Singapore, such as the perils of stigma and suffering in silence. We hope this initiative encourages others to build a similar platform in other parts of Southeast Asia.

I believe that mental health remains stigmatised to some extent in our society despite many efforts to openly talk about it. As part of the campaign, we tried inviting people with mental health issues to join a video-recorded interview but faced multiple cancellations as there were either concerns from the interviewees’ families or other personal issues that the interviewee faced.

One day, I hope that the true advocates for mental health are those who have recovered from their various inner struggles, and become role models for those who are in similar situations.

My teammates and I are still working on taking this campaign off the ground. For instance, we are currently reaching out to various student groups and forums, such as sharing about this campaign in the recent virtual Youth SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) Summit 2021.

In the future, we hope to empower younger minds to expand on this project and replicate it in other regions of Southeast Asia so that it can remain true and relevant to its respective context and gain greater outreach.