Ending Loneliness, One Pal At A Time

Jane is excited to finally enter #university . But the stress of study, assessments, grades, social navigation and uncertainty of the future started to pile on. Slowly she grew more and more #isolated , anxiety-riddled, sleep-deprived, and suffered severe headaches. She withdrew into her #dormitory room. Days passed and no one seemed to notice. She felt that no one cared for her or about her, and she suffered alone.?

Outside her door, the other students were living their lives. At home, her parents thought she was doing well and was too busy to call. At Uni, the teachers were being considerate and giving her extensions. None of them knew how she really felt.?

Peter grew up with much love in his family and in his heart. In a large family of seven, he knew how to consider others’ perspectives - especially when sharing one bathroom among five siblings. As the eldest brother he grew to be a good listener, and learned to notice when his younger siblings were feeling down. They didn’t have to tell him anything, he could tell how they felt just by looking at their body language and face.

When Peter decided to be a student leader on campus, all these skills helped him be a good peer supporter. But the most important skill of all, was in fact more of a habit he had cultivated. This was to always #checkin on people especially if he had not seen them for some time.?

This morning he woke up and realised he had not seen Jane for weeks. He walked to her door.

myPAL was created for the Ministry of Health Transformation office with the vision to help Singaporean youths (aged 13 - 25) be better peer-supports to each other and in doing so, ease the burden of burnout in #counsellors, #therapists, #socialworkers, and #healthcareprofessionals leaders. Young people prefer to ask peers for help in times of confusion and crisis. However, expecting young people to be a peer-support to another person without the right #psychological and #selfcare skills is unfair and challenging. They will likely be overwhelmed and withdraw from being peer-supporters.?

Thus, myPAL seeks to address mental health with a prevention lens, by providing digital and scalable professional training to peer-supporters. Peer-supporters and peer-users will be able to converse anonymously, with personalised on-the-job training and improvement provided for each peer-supporter by identifying gaps in their skills, as well as an e-learning curriculum for all. The e-learning is essential to scaling peer-support by a) improving and raising standards in peer- support conversations and b) increasing numbers of trained peer-supporters internationally to meet the mental health needs of youths.

The anticipated pilot will be with undergraduate nurses and medical students from the National University of Singapore. We will be using the I’m Friendly Co platform and lessons from Clanbeat eg. Video lesson on Worry and Anxiety - Clanbeat

If you’d like to help transform myPAL to reality or simply learn more about the project, please contact Marion at [email protected].

Here's a series of training videos for student leaders on basic psychological sound peer support skills https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/pals-check-marion-neubronner