By Camillia Anum Mohamad Ashraff (24S03B) and Gabriel Ho (24S02A)

It’s easy to say, “Never give up.”

It’s a lot harder to do that when you’re faced with permanent nerve damage.

As an example of this, Mr David Lim told attendees about a rare disorder he was diagnosed with that caused permanent nerve damage. He faced the possibility of paralysis, and it took many months of rehabilitation before he regained mobility.

On 14 February 2024, the Mental Health Strand of the Raffles Science Symposium was held in RI. With the overarching theme of resilience, the symposium brought hundreds of attendees from various schools and organisations together for an afternoon of insightful perspectives and personal experiences.

The symposium consisted of invited speakers and student sharings by members of the Peer Helpers Programme. The highlight was the keynote speaker, Mr David Lim, who shared the invaluable lessons he learned in his journey to climb Mount Everest. Mr Lim led the very first Singapore Everest Expedition in 1998, and has had a love for mountains for decades.

Mountains often appear insurmountable, especially when looking at it from its base. Mr Lim shared that it is all a matter of perspective, and breaking a big goal into smaller milestones. 

“Believe in your self-efficacy,” he says. “Try something small and succeed at it, then try something slightly bigger, and go on from there.”

Rejection and failure are all a matter of perspective too. Mr Lim faced countless rejections when seeking sponsorships for his expedition to Mount Everest. Many told him that his goals were overly ambitious, but he counters that we miss all the shots we don’t take. Even the worst case scenario will not be as bad as we think.

It was his determination to get better that drove him to keep attending rehabilitation and trying his best to recover. Even when he discovered that he would never regain full use of his lower body, he learned to embrace it. He jokingly recalls something his friend said that helped him stay positive: “If you die, you’re going to be a legend!”

To round off his sharing, Mr Lim shared a simple guide to building resilience: Relate, Repeat, and Reframe. Find others who share the same struggles, try again, and look at the problem from another angle.

Afterwards, attendees split into two Tracks: a talk on passion, and a talk on mental health struggles. The talks were delivered by Mr Sean Kong, the Chief Growth Officer of the Halogen Foundation, and Mr Asher Low, Executive Director of Limitless respectively.

Track 1

In Track 1, Mr Kong captured attendees’ interest by starting off with seemingly meaningless activities, such as asking everyone to clasp their hands together. However, this turned into a lesson on how things may initially feel unnatural or impossible, but will slowly get easier. Even though we all naturally default to clasping our hands with our left thumb over our right or vice versa, it is possible to clasp our hands the opposite way as well.

He discussed how passion helps to drive us, and why passion is so important. “Find something you are willing to suffer for,” he shared, as part of a list of tips. “You don’t need to have it all figured out by a certain age.”

While it is important to have passion, Mr Kong emphasises that passion cannot be our main motivator. “Motivation is overrated. Motivation is a feeling, and feelings change. Discipline trumps motivation.”

Mr Kong also revealed that he was undergoing a career change himself, and that he would be stepping down from his position as Chief Growth Officer of the Halogen Foundation. He used the opportunity to tell attendees that it was okay to lose passion for something, and it was necessary to have the courage to admit that.

Life is made up of seasons. There will be seasons in your life where you’ll pursue one thing, and there will be seasons where you pursue something else.

Mr Sean Kong

Track 2

Track 2’s speaker, Mr Asher Low, delivered a vulnerable insight into his personal struggles with mental health issues. The overarching message of his talk was “It’s okay to not be okay.”

He shared his struggles with self-image and self-hatred throughout his younger years, where he would feel like he didn’t deserve his supportive friends. He kept having flashbacks of failure, causing him to feel huge amounts of pressure to prove himself after previous failures, and was overwhelmed by unrelenting perfectionism.

At one point, Mr Low felt that he was unable to cope with the pressure and contemplated suicide, but tripped and fell on his way to the window.

He stresses that his friends were his lifelines when he felt like everything was impossible. “Peer support can keep a friend alive. Don’t underestimate the impact a friend can make.”

However, Mr Low also acknowledged that it is sometimes unrealistic and unreasonable to constantly rely on our friends—they are humans too. He emphasises the need to respect our friends’ personal time and space. 

When lending a helping hand to a friend, he suggests setting clear boundaries and offering support only within your bandwidth. For example, you could tell a friend that you will not reply to anything after 10pm, so that you can get sufficient sleep. “You are not responsible for your friend’s life”, he reiterated, urging us to seek professional help if we feel that we are unable to help our friend.

I would rather lose a friendship than lose a friend.

Mr Asher Low

Peer Helpers’ Sharings

Peppered throughout the symposium were various student sharings by Peer Helpers, who had done research on a myriad of topics relating to mental health. There were sharings on social rejection in RI (Project Closed Doors), overthinking (Team Underthinking), and self-esteem (Project Mirror Me), amongst many others. The sharings offered helpful solutions to some of these problems, such as meditating to stop overthinking, or reducing social media time to improve self-esteem.

Overall, the symposium was more than just the average mental health talks. Speakers were unafraid to be honest and vulnerable, and it allowed attendees to truly connect and understand the lessons they had learnt through their life experiences. If you’re interested in learning how to navigate the complexities of your mental health, consider attending next year’s edition of the RSS Mental Health Strand!