Mr Cho Ming Xiu, 30, a social work undergraduate at the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS) first saw what mental illness does to a person when he was in junior college.
His classmate, who was an accomplished student and president of the student council, dropped out abruptly during his second year. He had been struggling with depression. Mr Cho and his friends decided to talk and go out with the friend at least two to three times a week.
Supporting his friend through the crisis sparked a desire in Mr Cho to help young people struggling with mental illness. In 2016, while waiting to enrol at SUSS, he volunteered at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) for six months.
That spurred him to start Campus PSY, a mental health peer support group, with a few friends and the support of National Youth Council’s Youth Corps Singapore. The group has 50 members who receive training in peer-helping skills. They undergo a three-month training programme crafted and conducted with the help of mental health professionals from Chat, the Singapore Association for Mental Health, Samaritans of Singapore and Over The Rainbow, a youth mental wellness group.
They volunteer at mental health institutions weekly, do outreach and advocacy campaigns, and form peer-helping communities in tertiary institutions.
For Mr Cho, seeing peers with mental health issues overcome their personal hurdles is worth all the effort.
“We believe in giving back, and the kind of joy that we find in volunteering is what keeps us going back,” he said.
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Source: The Straits Times, 7 February 2018