By Amin Ridzuan Ishak
SHAH ALAM, July 17 — Community nowadays need to be more sensitive to behavioural changes in a person in the cyber world to be able to detect mental health problems.
Miri Hospital psychiatrist Dr Ravivarma Rao Panirselvam said the problems that could lead to suicide cannot be detected solely from changes in a person’s attitudes in real life.
According to him, with the widespread use of technology today, changes in attitude or speech alone is not enough to detect such problems, as it should also involve the person’s life in the cyber world.
“For example, how that person makes a post on social media or how he or she ignored a WhatsApp app message leaving it with just blue ticks (already read) without replying to it.
“Through this, we can see the character of that person and signs that he or she has mental problems, which cannot be taken lightly and must be helped immediately,” he said.
He said this during Media Selangor’s Bual Bicara virtual talk show titled ‘Curbing Suicide Is A Joint Responsibility’ that was aired live on Media Selangor’s Facebook page and SelangorTV Youtube channel yesterday.
Dr Ravivarma said those with mental health problems should seek immediate treatment to prevent worse incidents such as suicide.
“Malaysia has various facilities, whether owned by the government or the private sector, you can also seek help at 20 Mental and Psychiatric Centres (Mentari) in hospitals nationwide.
“Do not let it linger, because we have cases where a patient ignored a mental problem without getting treatment for 20 years, and this happened in the city, not in rural areas, making it harder to be treated,” he explained.
