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Just responding to the current situation to begin a chat on this. Generally psychiatric illness can be classified into The BAD, The SAD, and the MAD... You can also have a mix of conditions, such as borderline personalities, or a bipolar condition. If one has a serious psy issue, you need treatment by a psychiatrist, who may be assisted by a psychologist. A psychiatrist is a qualified doctor, who can diagnose, and more importantly treat a patient. The treatment can be in the form of words, such as counselling, psychological methods and medical or even ECT: Electroconvulsive treatment A psychologist aids by using non medical methods, such as listening, and active methods like flooding and other ways to help. There are POC (Psychiatric Outpatient Clinics) s to visit. IMH may be too scary or a label for them.... These are Government subsidised clinics nested within the polyclinics. Usually in a quiet corner and they get poly MCs so their bosses won't know otherwise. IIRC, Bedok, Tampines and Geylang poly have it - we had names for them - BePOC, TamPOC and GeyPOC Private help is always available, but it's costly.. but very private. Remember, illness must be correlated with the social context. Eg mediums are part of our society, so a person who claims he / she can talk to the Monkey God isn't necessarily mad. Medications can be taken orally, injected and you also have ECT. Training of a psychiatrist requires someone to take the basic degree, then enter residency for it and receive specialist training. Apart from IMH aka Woodbridge, there is NUH, which has a unit, and now TTSH too. It isn't a glamour practice, but it is needed. Psy illness isn't that uncommon, up to 1 in 150 can have it, just in various forms and at various parts of the spectrum. You can have traits, eg obsessive compulsive traits, eg, checking all your car doors once or twice before you can walk off, but you remain functional, all the way to a disorder, where you can't stop washing your hands, and even end up without skin because of hand washing.