Struggling with mental health, these young people in Singapore are turning to Discord for peer support

SINGAPORE – When they were struggling with their mental health, Jade and Annabelle, two women in their 20s, looked for peer support online.

Both came across an unconventional source of support – a Discord server run by It All Starts Hear SG, a social enterprise set up to provide community-based mental health support.

Discord, an online platform largely used by gamers and hobbyists, was released in 2015 but picked up steam amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

It allows for servers to be created, which like-minded people can join to interact with others through voice, text or video. Within the servers, channels can be curated for various interests or topics.

The Sunday Times found several Discord servers set up in Singapore in recent years with an aim of creating a space for young people to seek mental health support from their peers. 

While numbers are small, both the members and those who run the servers cite anonymity and better user safety as a key benefit of using the platform.

These include servers by IASH.SG, youth mental health charity Limitless, and Huddleverse, a mental health start-up founded by Singaporean Viaano Spruyt.

'Being anonymous makes it easier for me to be vulnerable'

Annabelle, who declined to give her full name, said she joined the IASH.SG server in October 2022 to find like-minded people going through mental health struggles.

She had attended an in-person peer support group before, but felt it was not a good fit. "I am too shy and introverted, but the people there were very expressive and eloquent," she said.

"I have social anxiety so it takes time for me to warm up to people that I have just met. Being anonymous makes it easier for me to be vulnerable."

Dr Ang Hernping, psychologist and founder of IASH.SG, said the server was set up to create a safe place to find peer support anonymously, while guiding at-risk youth into its support system.

It has grown to 425 members, mostly aged between 15 and 30, since it started in January 2022, added Dr Ang.

"Through server and private chats, we've helped people feel comfortable enough to seek help – such as at the Institute of Mental Health, private psychiatrists or therapy, or IASH.SG's counselling and therapy services," he said.

Psychology practice Annabelle Psychology also created a server in 2020. There are more than 120 users today, said principal clinical psychologist Annabelle Chow.

"We wanted to facilitate these conversations by having a psychologist contribute to these conversations where appropriate, and to provide resources where they make the most impact," she said, adding that her team tries to provide psychology content catered to the local audience.

Creating a safe online space

As with any online platform, especially one that offers anonymity, there are concerns that participants could face harassment, cyberbullying, spam or catfishing.

Discord itself has safeguards in place. On its website, it states that the vast majority of its servers are invite-only and private, and in order for another user to send someone a direct message, the recipient must accept the other user as a friend or join a server that the other user is a member of.

It also has a filter that automatically scans and deletes media sent in servers that contain explicit content such as nudity or gore, and can take action in case a server is "raided", where a large number of users or bots try to join the server for malicious purposes.

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Beyond that, different servers have additional safeguards.

IASH.SG's administrations actively discourage direct messages. The social enterprise's server also uses bots to monitor language.

Mr Asher Low, founder of Limitless, said the Safehouse server his charity operates openly encourages whistle-blowing if any member makes another feel unsafe. The server was set up in April 2021, and now has about 500 users.

Within the server, if the administrations detect disallowed behaviour, people will be given warnings or banned, he added. Discord allows for members to be banned for a period of time or permanently.

The server invite link is also shown publicly only when the charity carries out talks at a secondary school or university, to ensure those who join are young people.

The Huddleverse server, set up in early 2021, requires all users who join the server to have an e-mail address and phone number verified by Discord.

It currently has about 40,000 members from around the world, with about a third of them Singaporean, said Mr Spruyt.

Huddleverse also maintains a strict no-nonsense approach when moderating the server, and has banned about 3,000 users so far, he added. "Over the years, we have had to deal with trolls, harassment, unsolicited advertising, fake news and more."

While challenges still exist with using the platform, Mr Low believes the benefits outweigh the costs.

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"One of our core beliefs at Limitless is to go where young people are. It's similar to in-person work where we travel to where young people are to provide counselling," he said.

The platform is safer than other platforms like Telegram – where it is not possible to create different channels within a community – or WhatsApp, where it is harder to be anonymous, he added.

He has seen instances where a young person struggling with suicide ideation posts about it in the server, and other members step in to discourage him, while notifying volunteers and staff to step in with professional support.

Limitless has three staff specifically for the Discord server – a counsellor, a peer support specialist and an associate psychologist – who are complemented by more than 20 volunteers, and is trying to recruit more, said Mr Low.

Mr Spruyt said the younger generation, or Gen Zs, are more open to discuss their mental health experiences online. "This is the result of the generation being the first to have social media so readily available since birth," he added.

"As such, they tend to gravitate towards online communities and platforms where they are able to relate to, resonate with and learn about the experiences of their generation."

This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.