A GROUP of students and lecturers have started a community listening project aimed at erasing the stigma of mental health problems, which a government survey shows affected nearly one in three Malaysians.

The first of its kind in Asia, the “Sidewalk Talk Malaysia” project provides a listening ear to anyone who feels he has no one to talk about his problems.

Those with serious problems are advised on where they can go to for counselling and treatment.

“When someone listens to you, you will feel that you matter and are important,” said psychology lecturer Lim Mengzhen, one of sidewalk talk’s volunteers.

“The feeling that we want to create through this project is to make someone feel important. ‘That whatever I say, someone is listening’ – that’s how we promote good mental health,” Lim told The Malaysian Insight.

“We are giving voices to the people, all voices will be respected regardless of whether or not we agree or disagree with what is being said,” said Lim of SEGI College Subang Jaya.   

The project is inspired by a similar one that originated in San Francisco, US.

Sidewalk Talk Malaysia is the first community listening project in Asia, run by student and lecturer volunteers to promote the importance of human connection through empathic listening in public spaces. 

The group partnered with Malaysian Mental Health Association (MMHA), Befrienders Kuala Lumpur and Department of Social Welfare.

Sessions are held once every two weeks in two locations in the Sunway Pyramid Shopping Mall. Each session lasts 10 minutes during which anyone can drop by talk and share anything he likes.

The project comes at a time when mental health problems are increasing, according to the 2015 national health and morbidity study.

In 2015, 2.2 million Malaysians aged 16 and above, or 29.2% of the population, experienced mental health problems.

This is a sharp increase from the 11.2% recorded in 2006.

Positive feelings  

Lim said the idea for the project came from the desire to educate the public on services psychologists provide and the importance of maintaining mental health.  

“After discussions between lecturers and students, we concluded that we needed to build our own support system, otherwise statistics will remain statistics.

“We thought of peer counselling at first, but realised that it’s difficult because you need to have licences. So, we swapped the idea of peer counselling with listening.”

Their research led them to Sidewalk Talk San Francisco. They wrote to the US group and the latter replied and trained the Malaysian volunteers. The group adapted the US module to fit Malaysian culture.   

Sidewalk Talk provides listeners who can communicate in English, Malay, Mandarin, Tamil as well as Japanese.

At the moment, the team plans to continue the project until next April, before coming out with statistics to highlight the importance of the project.

About 30 student volunteers and lecturers from the psychology department have spent more than 100 hours on the project.

The statistics compiled from 77 individuals over five months have been encouraging.

Some 83.9% said they left feeling positive after a listening session. About 35.5% said they had no social support or people to listen to them.

The number one topic was family, (40.3% of participants), followed by academics (36.4%), friendship issues (26%), work (16.9%) and relationships (15.6%).

Empathy over advice  

The project’s organising committee chairman Shymala Chandran said the project is to provide a space for emphatic listening.

“We try to keep our empathy in the conversation. It means I listen to you, not with the intention to respond but I want you to feel that you are being heard,” she said.

“We have heard cases of students committing suicide, like for example because of UPSR results. People will ask why someone commits suicide over UPSR and they leave it at that.

“They don’t dwell further about the contributing factors that lead to suicide.

“By neglecting these contributing factors, suicide rates get higher.”

Lim stressed that the project did not provide crisis intervention, therapy or counselling.

“The reason we don’t give treatment is because people need listening ears, not advice. And we want to create equal feelings.

“And if you think you need help after we listen to you, we will share information on services or places you can go. Whether or not you want to go, is up to you.

“We are educating the public. So, we just give the right information to the people.”

And the sessions are not just for those with problems.

“People can just come and have a seat and talk about anything. For instance, if they got a promotion at work, we will be very happy to listen to them,” said Shymala.  

She said the group is looking for supporting partners who are willing to collaborate to expand the project.

“We want to expand our project. Right now, Sidewalk Talk Malaysia is under SEGi. If we gain enough support and help from other partners or organisations we can take it nationwide.” – December 27, 2017.