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EPIP NEWS
Local press

TODAY Singapore News // Monday, July 31, 2006

A view from the other side
Film on psychosis produced by students, targeted at youth
To watch the video, please click here

Lee U-Wen
u-wen@newstoday.com.sg

TO EDUCATE fellow youth about the stigma surrounding mental health, a group of polytechnic students have produced a video they hope will be played in schools island-wide. Called A View from the Other Side, the 15-minute film highlights the symptoms of psychosis and the need to seek treatment early.

The effort by the six Singapore Polytechnic students has been welcomed by the Institute of Mental Health (IMH), which plans to promote the video to secondary schools, junior colleges and tertiary institutions.
Launched on Saturday, the video is targeted at those aged between 15 and 20 years, as this is when the first symptoms of psychosis usually materialise, said the IMH's Early Psychosis Intervention Programme (EPIP) consultant, Dr Theresa Lee.

Psychosis is a serious medical condition caused by a disruption in the brain functions. Sufferers usually lose touch with reality and may experience hallucinations. Overall, an average of three in 100 people will experience psychosis at some stage of their life. Youth aged 15 to 20 years form 17.4 per cent of the total number of people referred to and accepted by EPIP.

With the new video, the programme can reach out to this specific group and educate them on how to spot the warning signs.Previously, most outreach efforts went out to a more general audience. According to student Shawn Sin, who was the production's assistant director, the group watched movies such as Fight Club and A Beautiful Mind for inspiration when writing the script.

"I used to think mental illness was incurable and that you would be saddled with it forever. Now, I know it's not true and I hope our production can help spread that word to others," he said. The icing on the cake? Everyone on his team scored an A for their effort.
Treating Psychosis Early
The number of people being accepted into the Early Psychosis Intervention Programme (EPIP) is on the rise. When it was first founded in 2001, there were just 181 referrals. The following year, this more than doubled, to 390. As of June this year, EPIP has screened nearly 1,400 people and accepted more than 1,000 into the programme.

In the past five years, the programme's efforts at spotting the signs of psychosis have proven successful, said Dr Theresa Lee. Before 2001, the average time between the first signs of psychosis and a person seeking treatment was 12 months.

Today, this has fallen to just four months. What this means, said Dr Lee, is that patients are able to receive better treatment from counsellors and make a faster recovery. "Some of the signs include abnormal behaviour, being irritable, mood swings, or losing interest in things which one would usually enjoy," she said.