SENATOR Sherwin Gatchalian on Tuesday expressed serious concern over the high number of suicide incidents among public school students despite the enactment of Republic Act 11036 or the Mental Health Act which integrates mental health into the education system.

Gatchalian said 2,147 attempted suicides were reported in public schools and 404 students took their own life during the School Year 2021-2022.

“One Life is too many Mr. Chairman. That’s why the Committee on Basic Education, which yours truly chair, will be sponsoring a bill that will go deeper into the mental health and wellness programs of our basic education institutions,” he said.

Gatchalian said that the pandemic of mental health is happening in the Philippines as he observed that the data of suicide cases has dramatically increased from 2019 to 2020.

The senator cited data from the Philippine Statistics Authority showing that there were 2,810 reported suicide cases in 2019 while there were 4,420 in 2020.

“Just because of the pandemic, the suicide cases went up twice and the amount of calls received through NCMH is only 2,800 number of calls in terms of suicide cases. In other words, ang tumatawag sa inyo 2,800 pero ang nagpakamatay 4,400, there are more unreported suicide cases. So what are we doing? The pandemic of mental health is already here,” Gatchalian said.

“That’s scary because people are now hopeless and they don’t find any use to call the hotline,” he added.

“We should start consolidating these calls to know if we are doing enough or not doing enough. We have a law, but we don’t know if the law is effective or not. We have a law, but we don’t know if we are implementing it to the letter or not,” he said.