Speaking to FMT in conjunction with World Mental Health Day today, Ronald Lee of the Centre for Psychological and Counselling Services said there is no centralised body to conduct or streamline the country’s mental health research, education, training and awareness programmes.

“The various professions — like psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, counsellors and social workers — are working in silos and focused on their own areas. Everyone is doing their own thing,” he said.

“When we talk about mental health, we need all these professions working together to address people’s needs.

“A government-funded institute of mental health would also make it easier to conduct research or gather and share data from across the country.”

Lee said the institute could also play a role in coordinating or starting research into specific topics at the national level.

Among the neighbouring countries with similar bodies include Singapore and Thailand, which have an Institute for Mental Health and Mental Health Department respectively.

In Malaysia, there are six separate institutes under the health ministry’s National Institutes of Health.

Apart from institutes for medical research, clinical research and public health, there are also institutes for health systems research, health management and health behavioural research.

Consultant psychiatrist Philip George, who leads the psychiatry department at the International Medical University, hoped to see the country establish an institute for mental health in the same vein as the National Heart Institute (IJN) or the Institute of Respiratory Medicine (IPR).

Stating that mental health units across the country are “very under-resourced”, he hoped an institute for mental health would go some way in alleviating such concerns.

“Campuses do ad-hoc research, but to have a central Institute of Mental Health to collate all this and conduct state-of-the-art research would be ideal,” he said, adding that the institute could also serve as a think tank.