Conscription’s Mental Health Problem

Maximilian Oh
6 min readMar 1, 2021

It is easy to dismiss complaints about the psychological toll that conscription takes on 18-year old recruits by attributing it to a ‘strawberry generation’, or by telling them to ‘man-up’. However, we are not at war, and losing men to suicide or long-term depression issues is not acceptable, especially during peacetime.

Full-time National Servicemen (NSFs) serving in the Singapore Army have it quite different from the rest of the world. Some countries conscript and draft able-bodied men when tensions with other countries rise, while countries like South Korea have no other choice — their nation is still at war. While the Singapore Army does support operations that safeguard our borders, it can be argued that we serve mainly as a reactionary force to neighbours that we have relatively peaceful relations with.

With that, it is in my view that the greatest threat to the health and safety of our NSFs is their mental health.

An Unhealthy View of Masculinity

While the typical measures of masculinity — fitness, mental resilience, and the ability to repress emotions are beneficial to fighting and winning a war, I’d argue that not having these traits does not by any means make anyone less of a solider, and definitely not less of a man.

Suggesting that soldiers repress their feelings and ‘man-up’ in the face of adversity can lead to the unhealthy mentality that soldiers seeking help are weaker than the rest. Research from the RAND National Defence Research Institute has shown that men face more stigma with seeking help, due to expectations to be stoic and self-reliant, and being in an environment that actively encourages that is unhealthy.

It is widely accepted in educational institutions and private corporations that providing care for one’s mental health is important, and the message that one is not weak for seeking help is widespread publicly. It is the responsibility of commanders and the Singapore Army to do the same. If a soldier struggling with his mental health is faced with comments about being a ‘chao-keng’ by his peers and commanders, it may discourage him, and others like him, to not seek help, leaving them to attribute their problems to simply not being ‘man’ enough.

Too much stigma surrounds men seeking mental health assistance, and this is worsened by an institution and environment that seeks to promote being self-reliant as a desired trait from men and soldiers.

Being Forced into the Unfamiliar Sucks

National Service is compulsory, and no Singaporean son experiences anything close to military life before conscription. Cadets from the uniformed CCA groups may be familiar with certain aspects of regimentation and rank structures, but nothing comes close to life in the Army.

A study about conscription in Finland found that enlistment for recruits is similar to dealing with a disastrous event; all available resources and skills are needed to deal with multiple situational stressors in a new environment. The emotional and mental toll taken on a young boy being thrown into an unfamiliar, unforgiving environment is significant. Being forcefully separated from family and friends, and having to follow the orders of other young boys, in addition to old uncles can be stressful for conscripts.

The lack of control over one’s personal life is the greatest contributor to the feelings of loss and isolation, and surveys conducted by the Estonian Journal of Military Studies support this; soldiers who signed up for the Army were less likely to have faced mental health issues, as compared to those who were conscripted via a call-up letter. This may explain the divide between commanders and men in the Singapore Army. How could regular Warrant Officers and Officers who signed-on empathise with NSFs who were forced into their situation?

Regulars in the Singapore Army must recognise that conscription, while necessary, causes recruits to feel at loss. They have no other choice but to serve, and have to do so while being treated as the ‘lowest life form’, amidst a sometimes overwhelming environment.

How We Can Do Better

To give the Singapore Army credit, counsellors and para-counsellors have been deployed across all units, and ground commanders are trained and required to regularly evaluate the mental health of the soldiers under their charge. That said, the information that they gather is only as good as the soldier’s word.

Soldiers may not tell the truth about their situation or emotional state due to a multitude of reasons. For one, soldiers will still have to work with their commanders daily, and despite promises that information shared would stay between a soldier and the person he consults, stories about that promise not being held up are plenty. Some may believe that as their Army life is temporary, they would not want it to go on their permanent record, and in turn affect their public life in the future. Soldiers may also be hesitant to approach anyone due to the negative stereotype of soldiers ‘keng-ing’, drawing unwanted bullying from their fellow servicemen, sometimes even from his commanders.

To combat these problems, I am proposing two solutions.

  1. A Military Mental Health Council, with appointees from the Ministry of Health, independent of the Ministry of Defence.
  2. Flexibility in vocational postings and training within units.

Having an independent body be available to NSFs and Regulars in the Army would allow soldiers to consult external parties who would not affect their daily life in the unit. This can be done via having the council approach NSFs regularly, with guarantees from the government that the information will not be shared with MINDEF, and can be erased from records at the request of the soldier. Having the council approach the NSFs regularly prevents their commanders or peers from knowing that they are facing mental health issues without a soldier’s consent, as all soldiers would have to engage with the council.

Many NSFs do not get the vocations they want, despite having the skills associated with their desired vocations. Allocating time for additional vocational training, and making vocational schools take in trainees from other vocations can give NSFs a sense of fulfilment and control over their time in their unit. For example, in an ordinary Infantry unit, those who had training in IT can be sent for Cyber Defence courses despite not being under the Cyber NSF programme, and can assist the unit’s intel efforts through cross-deployment when necessary. This can also help units kickstart IT projects that enhance the operational capabilities of the Army.

Unfortunately, these proposals would take a lot of time and money. However, it is still possible to begin tackling mental health issues in the Army immediately. My personal experience, corroborated by recent efforts from the Ministry of Education to establish peer support networks, indicates that having someone to confide in is the key to helping individuals facing distress. The Army needs to encourage its soldiers to not only look out for the physical safety and health of their buddy and peers, but to also look out for their mental health.

These proposed efforts, as well as existing ones, will not work if we continue to look at National Service (NS) as a liability. A whole-of-government (WoG) effort is needed to encourage Singaporeans to appreciate the service of our NSFs, and movies like ‘Ah Boys to Men’ do not help. We must make NS beneficial to the lives of NSFs, not detrimental. After all, do they not benefit the nation?

It has been 6 to 7 years since I wrote about mental health in schools and among students on my old blog, and a lot has improved since then. The importance of mental health in educational institutions has been recognised by our government, and has been mentioned many times by our parliamentarians in recent years. I hope that this momentum will carry forward to the context of NS, and that we will see improvements in the Singapore Army.

To those serving the nation, thank you for your service.

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Maximilian Oh

Editorial Writer from Singapore. Pursuing Political Science and Philosophy at the National University of Singapore.