THE Education Ministry should send school teachers and counsellors for training to better detect signs of depressions among students, Sarawak’s minister in charge of children said.

Sarawak’s Welfare, Community Wellbeing, Women, Family and Childhood Development Minister Fatimah Abdullah said the 16-year-old girl who committed suicide on Monday after being egged on by her Instagram friends and followers was an example of a troubled youth who had slipped the attention of her teachers and counsellors.

“We need some kind of a course that could help them detect abnormal behaviour among students and students in trouble,” she told reporters after handing out Raya and Gawai goodies to welfare recipients in Petra Jaya this afternoon.

All teachers should be taught how to identify symptoms of depression in students, she added.

“Not just the Guru Hal Ehwal Murid (student welfare teachers) or the student counsellors.”

Currently, while schools have teachers tasked with looking after student welfare, none were specifically trained to handled depression and anxiety in students.

She said early intervention in students’ mental health could avert tragedies, more so as mental health issues have become more prevalent among adolescents.

“Times have changed,” she said, adding that social media has changed how students behave and interact, while posing challenges to teachers.

The 16-year-old had jumped out of her third floor of a shoplot building in MJC Batu Kawa about five hours after conducting a poll on her Instagram account asking followers to help her choose between “D or L”, in reference to death or life.

Sixty-nine percent of the respondents said she should choose death.

The teen, who was found sprawled on the road below at 8pm on Monday, reportedly came from a broken home. – May 16, 2019.