SIBU: An Ontological Life Coach is undertaking to deal with depression issues by holding ‘Being with Depression’, a public welfare talk, across the country.
Kelantan born Jason Zeck Lee, 50, said he is currently embarking on a series of talks on his own initiative, for free.
“Why I am doing this, because with all data stating that a lot of people have been suffering from depression, yet we do not have people coming up to create awareness and as such, we need to do that.
“Like it or not, someone needs to do that. Actually, I have been doing that since August 2019 till now. But I stopped during COVID-19 pandemic for three years, then I pick up again,” he told New Sarawak Tribune during his stint here recently.
Jason said he is merely using part of his time to focus on this community project – a calling that needs him to do it.
“We need to find ways to support them especially (those with depression) because the issue…just imagine the family with someone who is suffering from depression, it affects the whole momentum of the family, the family dynamics will be influenced and that will lead to marriage problem, financial problem, work problem, etc.
“It’s an issue that the government or the private sector…everybody needs to focus on. So that is why I focus on doing this.
“We even started right before the onslaught of COVID-19 pandemic because we foresee depression issues are going to increase. During the Movement Control Order (MCO) owing to COVID-19 pandemic, actually there are a lot of people with depression due to relationship, work and finance as they can’t seem to be able to deal with the unknown.
“You just imagine we have been locked down, nobody knows what is next, when we are going to come out from there. That is a lot of dynamics change… everything change…and then people tend to not know what is going to be next for they can’t see the unknown…They are not ready for it.
He explained they forced themselves to cope with stress and pressure brought about by their financial issue and that relating to their school going children who were confined at home, which actually led to depression.
Even In 2018, a press release dated on Oct 10 revealed that for those 13 to 17 years old, 18.3 per cent had been diagnosed with depression, which is a huge number.
“Just imagine that they are our future, and this is almost one out of five which is very serious,” he pointed out, adding that the number has been on the rise over the years.
