Building a youth-centric mental health solution

Contributed by Janice Weng & Caleb Tan

Our journey in creating a digital peer support network from conceptualisation to implementation.

Unpacking youth mental health

According to a NUS study, one in three youths in Singapore has reported internalising mental health symptoms such as sadness, anxiety and loneliness, and roughly one in six experienced externalising mental health symptoms, such as hyperactivity, rule-breaking and aggression.

At the end of 2021, The MOHT mindline team analysed strategies and initiatives to support the mental health of young people. A team of students and young working adults aged 17-25 was formed to conduct research, ideate and co-create solutions to address the needs and barriers they face in their mental health journey.

Here are some insights we found:

Key research findings

• Most youths turn to their peers and/or online resources as their first avenue of support

• A wide array of digital self-help tools in the market but some can be impersonal, from which youths may not know which one to use, and app fatigue can take place from over-digitalisation

• Our youths are curious about mental health, and are more open to help-seeking than the generations before them

• Some are not aware of the right avenues for their mental health needs

• Others prefer to seek private services but do not have the means, and some become resistant to help-seeking due to long wait times, poor past counselling experiences, or perceived stigma from family

Armed with these research findings, 5 big ideas emerged:

Strengthening the peer support network in Singapore

Among these ideas, the team decided to prioritise and focus on creating an online community forum for young people to interact with fellow youths and professionals in a moderated safe space as a start. Peer support was consistently shared as an important and trusted help-seeking channel for the young people we spoke with. We found that existing initiatives by Health Promotion Board (HPB), National Youth Council (NYC), schools and non-profit organisations train young people to be peer supporters which validated the team’s hypothesis. We saw an opportunity to provide an online channel for these trained peers to put their skills to good use, and to maintain connection with other peer supporters for continuous learning. As a digital solution, it is easy to use and available 24/7, thus making it convenient for motivated young people to volunteer help anytime anywhere. We aim to leverage the power of communities, both online and offline, to build stronger support networks for our young people in Singapore.

Digital as a solution

TL;DR – let’s talk is a mental health focused Reddit + Quora

How we envision let's talk to work for our youths

• An online moderated space that provides a safe, positive, and reassuring environment for youths to share ideas and stories, and foster solidarity through shared experiences.

• Youths can take the lead to form and maintain community groups pertaining to different wellness topics such as dealing with exam stress, facing family issues, helping others etc.

• Youths can reach qualified therapists to get their most pressing questions, thoughts, and concerns addressed by a professional.

let’s talk features

1. Ask A Therapist
Our youths get the opportunity questions they have on mental health. Older millennials might remember the “Ask Aunt Agony” column in the magazine era. This is the digital version focusing on mental health. While not constituting medical advice, the response is provided by a trained therapist.

2. Hangouts
A space for our youths to discuss their thoughts and rant about anything from student life to adulting and even money issues

3. Fun activities
We run weekly challenges here to encourage self-care. Youths can also suggest date ideas or me-time activities that work best for them

4. Wellness events
A consolidation of the latest happenings in the mental health space

5. Chatrooms for organisations
An invite-only space for our partners

Some design considerations

Why a forum and not a Telegram or Discord channel?

There are some existing mental health focused Telegram and Discord channels such as Limitless’ SafeHouse, iASH’s Come Hear SG. In the process of ensuring we do not replicate the existing efforts, some youths we interviewed shared that they found it challenging to initiate and follow conversations in fast-moving chat-based channels like Telegram and Discord. We wanted users to be able to learn about mental health at their own pace, so a forum seemed to be a suitable platform.

Anonymous profile pictures

let’s talk is completely anonymous. We don’t collect any information about our users besides their email address which is never posted or shared. Users go by a ‘handle’ which they choose, and we’ve also designed a series of anonymous profile pictures for users to choose from. This way, our users cannot accidentally divulge their real-life information or photos.

Moderation

As with any community forum, we take content moderation very seriously. Besides prompting users to read our community guidelines during the sign-up process, we deploy a series of moderation tools to help us keep the community safe. For example, a profanity filter helps us censor a list of curated words. We also actively encourage users to flag inappropriate posts which will be hidden and reviewed by our community manager. Our team of volunteer moderators also help to ensure that conversations are respectful and step in to address any heated discussions. When we detect self-harm ideation, we guide the users to seek immediate help and provide them with useful pointers to get immediate help.

Beta testing

We ran several beta tests with over 200 youths from partners including Singapore Polytechnic, Youth Corp Singapore, Republic Polytechnic and Temasek Polytechnic to gather feedback on user experience and understand preliminary impact of let’s talk. The results are encouraging.

• 100% found let’s talk to be effective (to varying degrees) in providing peer support

• 100% found let’s talk to be effective (to varying degrees) in receiving peer support

• 93% found “Ask-A-Therapist” to be effective in improving their mental wellbeing

• 84% say they feel safe expressing their thoughts and feelings on let’s talk

• 82% say they would recommend let’s talk to a friend

Amongst the feedback we received, one was particularly heartening. Beta test users told us that after being on let’s talk for 4 weeks, they have learned so much and have now found the courage to seek professional help.

What's next?

let’s talk remains a work in progress as we engage with more young people and youth ecosystem providers to understand how we can work together to support the mental health and wellbeing needs of our emerging adults. We are also extending outreach efforts to more tertiary institutions and onboarding more users to reach a critical mass for the community to be self-sustainable.

If you have ideas on how to improve the platform or reach out to more users, we would love to get in touch and explore collaboration opportunities.

You can reach us at mindlinesg@moht.com.sg or connect with us on socials.

• IG: @mindline.sg

• Telegram: t.me/letstalkbymindline

Janice Weng is a founding team member and project lead of mindline.sg. She leads the digital mental health and wellness programme, focusing on designing and co-creating innovative digital solutions to improve the wellness journey of citizens across life stages. Janice has extensive experience in social services and management consultancy, specialising in business and digital transformation, research and evaluation, and non-profit capacity building. Janice has a Masters in Public Policy from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

Caleb Tan leads partnerships and outreach efforts for mindline.sg. He has a keen interest in behavioural economics and the use of technology to improve lives. Caleb has extensive experience in employee wellbeing, specialising in designing and implementing digital health programmes. Caleb has a Masters in Public Health from the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at the National University of Singapore.