Perhaps the dark cloud of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has been ‘imprisoning us all‘ in our homes over the last year, in whichever corner of the world we live in, does have a silver lining after all ! 

Mental health, which has always been the stigma laden component of health is beginning to be shown the front seat and increasingly being recognised as THE MOST important determinant of an individual’s ability to weather this and every possible storm of life. 

The ability to keep our head above the water and survive by maintaining good mental and psychological well-being, is increasingly being shown to be the vital factor in determining good physical health, and helps us cope with the uncertainty of the future. It determines our functioning and helps us build resilience to cope with future stressors.

What is the challenge for those of us who have the brilliant minds, the passion, the expertise and the economic ability to make a difference? How can we alleviate mental suffering and prevent illness, empower the children of today, not just to survive this pandemic but develop the resilience and mental capability to become better leaders of tomorrow?We need to start by becoming their role models today, and the Covid-19 pandemic is revolutionising the way we live, learn, ‘go to school’, communicate and indirectly pointing the way. We need to become digital warriors for the sake of our children and teach them how to fight this and other future wars.

As succinctly pointed out by Dr. Daniel Fung, IACAPAP President, Adjunct Associate Professor, Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine Singapore, in his  IACAPAP President’s Message – March 2021 – IACAPAP: Starting a War in 2021

By: Dr Daniel Fung, 

“…. we have a responsibility to build a better world for our children. If all we do is treat mental illnesses in children, we might as well be a car mechanic repairing the vehicles that have broken down. We want to be the engineers that design better cars for the future. Which means we must think of the social determinants of mental illness and the adverse childhood experiences that cause childhood and eventually adult mental illnesses in the first place. We must do better for protecting children and their development in the critical and sensitive periods.

We need to rally together as a community of practitioners to develop mental health interventions for preventing mental illness and promoting resilience that is evidence  informed. I dare not say evidence based because it may be hard to get to that standard but we certainly have enough evidence to suggest that so much can be done to reduce abuse, neglect and bullying in environments that children grow up in. We can do this together with other like-minded organisations, not just with psychiatrists. We need to work across disciplines and also across the world. Many lower- and middle-income countries do not have many professionals caring for children so we need to extend our advocacy to those areas as well. In the past, this would be difficult but in today’s connected world, it could be done virtually, in an instance.

We are starting a new way of reaching out to the world using the technology that we have before us. This journey started 10 years ago and has gone from strength to strength. I drew that engineering analogy because the child mental health professional of the future is a digital warrior.” 

Do we dare to take up this challenge from whichever corner of the world we come from to REALLY start to work together as digital warriors and make that much needed difference, that, right now is indeed a matter of life or death?