“My uncle was the first gastroenterologist in Malaysia. Naturally, my family regarded medicine as a noble profession that would guarantee financial freedom, hence every child in the family was forced to pursue it. This was stressful as I never wanted to be a doctor and the stress was compounded by my father’s beliefs that failing to get into medicine in University of Malaya (UM) meant you were stupid and that non-specialist medical practitioners were on par with college dropouts.’’

“Depression for me had always been intermittent episodes. My earliest memory of feeling off was at age 12. My school had just put on a play and what initially started off as being “post-performance blues” soon sent my mental health derailing…”