“We need to gather such data so we can have concrete evidence to make people realise that those with mental illness must be helped,” said the NGO’s president, Anita Abu Bakar.

“We used to have a national registry for suicides but it stopped recording new data in 2009.”

She told FMT research universities might have some data and, if so, these pieces of information needed to be centralised.

“We should have one data registry where we gather all information to be made available to anyone,” she said.

She spoke of an effort to form a coalition of NGOs that would gather data to make it easier to push for policy changes, but did not give details.

“We need to push the issue,” she said. “If not, there’ll be people who won’t receive treatment and discrimination will continue at the workplace, universities and schools.”

She said the stigma associated with mental disease could be removed if people were made aware of its nature.

She noted that mental illness was expected, by next year, to be the second biggest health problem afflicting Malaysians after heart disease.

Youths are known to be the largest group of people with mental illness and Anita attributed this to pressure from family members to do well in school and the trauma caused by bullying and sexual and emotional abuse.