Report Plan for Pol

Introduction

According to World Health Organisation, there will be around 450 million people worldwide that will suffer from a mental disorder in their lifetime. Anyone can have a 6.5% chance of being affected by anxiety and depressions, 15.7% chance of suffering from minor mental illness or a 5.2% chance of dementia if aged 60 and above. (Institute of Mental Health) Mental disorders are expected to be on the rise of 2.4% from 2000 to 2020. In Singapore, mental illness has always been a taboo topic and people with mental disorder who are capable of contributing to the society and holding a job are often repressed because of the stigma that clings to mental illnesses. In 2005, a committee of policy makers and mental health professionals who were appointed by Ministry of Health formulated a National Mental Health Policy.

In Singapore, mental illness has always been a taboo topic and people with mental disorder who are capable of contributing to the society and holding a job are often repressed because of the stigma that clings to mental illnesses. An Institute of Mental Health study showed that 70% of 60,000 people with mental disorders are unemployed. Using Stone (1989) casual theories, it can be clearly seen that the National Mental Health Policy and Blueprint has been formulated because of an inadvertent cause; “Inadvertence here is ignorance”. It is reported by Singapore Mental Health Study (2010) that majority of the people with mental illness were not seeking professional help and one of the major factor was because of how society ignorantly perceive mental patients. Ignorance was not only present in the mentally ill and society but in the government as well. As said earlier, a policy was only formulated recently to address building reduce stigma, resilience to mental disorder, work towards early detection, engage community support and lastly, to integrate the mentally ill into the workforce. Evidently showing how the government was ignorant to the...