Kabataan Party-list Rep. Raoul Manuel is asking the Marcos administration to declare a mental health emergency in the country as a way to address the unprecedented number of suicides and attempted suicides among Filipino youth the past year.
In a statement Thursday, Feb. 2, Kabataan expresses grave concern over the Department of Education’s (DepEd) report during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Basic Education stating that a total of 404 youth students nationwide took their own lives during academic year 2021 to 2022.
Another 2,147 students attempted suicide during the same period, the report said.
"Crunching the data, there had been more than one student who fell victim to suicide per day while roughly one student attempted to commit suicide every four hours in the past academic year. These are numbers we have never seen before," Manuel said.
"In light of this, we urge authorities to declare a mental health emergency to give way for immediate and substantial government action to ramp up budget and support for mental health professionals and services," said Manuel, who is a member of the militant Makabayan bloc.
"It's also best for Congress to exercise its oversight powers to check the implementation of the Mental Health Law so we can better address shortcomings," added the youth solon.
"Higit sa pagtugon sa mental health services, di natin maitatanggi na epekto rin ito ng higit dalawang taong pagsara ng mga paaralan at ang distance o hybrid learning modality na dumoble sa load at gastusin ng mga estudyante (On top of addresing mental health services, we cannot deny that this was also the effect of the over two-year closure of schools and the use of the distance or hybrid learning modality that doubled students' load and expenses).
"In this regard, we also need a serious review and overhaul of education policies especially the K-12 while we ensure 100 percent face-to-face classes," he said.
Manuel said he will file a House resolution to urge the current administration to declare a mental health emergency, investigate the existing crisis, and expedite policies to address such crisis.