EXPRESSING alarm over the spike in suicides among the young and the calls for help at public hotlines, senators on Tuesday pushed for reforms in the Department of Health’s priorities in order to devote more resources and better services for the rising problems of mental health.
At a hearing by the Senate Committee on Health chaired by Sen. Christopher “Bong” Go, data on the sharp and steady rise in the calls received by the National Center for Mental Health (NCMH) were among the indicators cited by Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian to illustrate the problem, which grew during the pandemic.
In 2019, before the Covid-19 health crisis, the National Center for Mental Health (NCMH) received 3,125 calls, of which 712 were deemed “suicide-related,” according to Department of Health data cited by Gatchalian.
That number grew to 11,017 total calls; while the suicide-related calls grew fourfold to 2,841 in 2020, the first year of the pandemic.
In 2021, the total calls numbered 14,897, and the suicide-related ones spiked to 5,167, the data showed.
At the hearing, Senator Go, presiding officer, vowed to make mental health services “affordable and available” always. “Let’s help the helpless and the hopeless, lalo na yung walang matakbuhan,” said Go.
At the same time, Sen. Gatchalian expressed serious con-cern over the high number of suicide incidents among public school students in the country despite the enactment of Republic Act (RA) 11036 or the Mental Health Act which integrates mental health into the education system.
During the public inquiry of the Committee on Health and Demography on the implementation of RA 11036 Tuesday, Gatchalian noted that there were about 2,147 attempted suicides that were reported in public schools and a total of 404 students committed actual suicide during the school year 2021-2022.
“One Life [lost] is too many, Mr. Chairman. That’s why the Committee on Basic Education, which yours truly chairs, will be sponsoring a bill that will go deeper into the mental health and wellness programs of our basic education institutions,” Gatchalian said.