MENTAL health issues should not be made into political ammunition let alone be used to humiliate someone, said Miri MP Chiew Choon Man.
Chiew’s statement came following Pasir Salak MP Jamaludin Yahya’s suggestion during this morning’s (May 23) Parliament session that the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community be categorised under those who are mentally disordered.
Jamaludin put forth the suggestion when he interrupted Kapar MP Dr Halimah Ali’s speech during a debate on the Mental Health (Amendment) Bill 2023 to decriminalise suicide. Dr Halimah supported Jamaludin’s suggestion and agreed to include it in her speech.
Chiew, in calling Jamaludin’s accusations “baseless”, stressed that it is not appropriate for any party to be characterised as mentally disordered without a medical justification or medical specialists’ opinions.
“I hope all MPs in this House could respect every individual who is inside or outside the Dewan Rakyat. Mental health issues are health issues that should be dealt with seriously and professionally by all,” he remarked.
“Therefore, I rebut Pasir Salak’s statement in Kapar’s debate just now, where he said that the LGBT community should be categorised under those with a mental health disorder.”
Yesterday (May 22), Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Law and Institutional Reform) Ramkarpal Singh; tabled the second reading of the amendment bill aimed at providing crisis intervention officers from the listed bodies the authority to apprehend identified individuals following changes to Section 309 of the Penal Code to decriminalise suicide attempts.
Since the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government took office in 2019, Putrajaya has been talking about decriminalising suicide attempts.
The Health Ministry’s psychosocial helpline received nearly five times as many calls in 2021 as it did the previous year, with 212,319 calls from January 2021 to December 2021, compared to the same period in 2020, which saw the helpline receive only 44,061 calls.
According to Ramkarpal, who is also the Bukit Gelugor MP, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Health Ministry discovered a 2.3% rate of depression among Malaysians aged 16 and above, affecting close to 500,000 people.
Ramkarpal also noted that studies have indicated that people with depression are 20 times more likely to have suicidal tendencies and die by suicide. – May 23, 2023
