Singapore is in the middle of a public consultation on how young people get mental health support, and it closes at 6pm on 8 December 2026. If you have ever hesitated over whether to see a counsellor here, or wondered what happens to the information afterwards, the thinking behind that consultation is worth understanding.
On 10 October 2026, Singapore's Minister for Health and Coordinating Minister for Social Policies, Mr Ong Ye Kung, gave his World Mental Health Day message. Most of the coverage focused on physical buildings but the part that has since turned into something concrete was about privacy.
First, the buildings. The Institute of Mental Health will be redeveloped and expanded on its current site, with a larger, more modern hospital targeted by 2040. In 2027, IMH will become a national specialty centre and be renamed the National Centre for Mental Health Singapore, leading research and coordinating psychiatric care across hospitals. Changi General Hospital, Woodlands Hospital and Alexandra Hospital are all strengthening their psychiatric capabilities.
Then two things that will reach ordinary people sooner. The Singapore Medical Council is revising its ethical guidelines on parental consent for young people's mental health care, and the Ministry of Health is developing guidelines for service providers — with public views to be sought in the coming weeks.
And one sentence that stood out to us and extremely relevant to Singaporeans. Asked what stands in the way of people getting help, the minister did not name cost, or waiting times, or a shortage of clinicians. He named stigma, and he was specific about its shape: people fear judgement, and they fear "lasting records that could affect education, jobs, scholarships or insurance."
The natural worry about a lasting record
It would be easy to treat this worry or fear as a misunderstanding to be corrected. We don't think it is.
People who grew up in Singapore have usually heard a story — a scholarship application that asked an awkward question, an insurance form with a box about mental health history, a cousin who was advised not to put anything in writing. Some of those stories are out of date. Some were never quite accurate to begin with. But they circulate, and they do their work. By the time someone is unwell enough to consider therapy, they are rarely in a position to carefully evaluate which version is true.
So the hesitation is not irrational. It is a reasonable response to genuine uncertainty about what happens to information once you hand it over.
What has changed is that the uncertainty is now officially on the record as a problem. A health minister naming it in a national address — and a revision of professional guidelines following close behind — is a signal that the system knows this is costing people care.
How confidentiality works in private counselling
What gets written down. Your therapist keeps confidential clinical records — brief, functional notes on what was discussed, what you are working on, and what to pick up next time. They exist so your sessions build on each other rather than starting from nothing each week. They are kept in a dedicated clinical records system (in our case a platform called Cliniko, which stores data on Amazon Web Services servers in Australia), encrypted in transit and at rest, behind individual logins with two-factor authentication. We hold them for seven years after your last session, and then they are destroyed. For clients who were under 18, the seven years runs from their eighteenth birthday rather than their last session. Messages about arranging appointments are deleted in about 180 days, and enquiries that never become appointments are deleted within 45-60 days.
Who can see them. Access is by individual login and limited by role, so a colleague who has no part in your care cannot read your file. Our administrative contractors, who handle scheduling, can see your contact and appointment details — the information needed to book you in — but cannot open clinical notes or read your intake forms. No employer, school, scholarship board or insurer receives your records: not routinely, not on request, not without your specific written consent. We do not sell personal information and we do not share it with other companies for marketing.
One honest wrinkle on insurance. If you choose to claim your sessions against a private policy, you can ask us for an invoice — and that invoice tells your insurer you attended, because that is what a claim is. What it does not do is hand over your notes or anything you said. The choice to claim, and therefore the choice to tell them anything at all, stays with you.
You can also ask us for a copy of your own information at any time, ask us to correct it, or ask who it has been disclosed to in the past year. We aim to respond within 30 days. The full detail is in our privacy policy.
Seeing a counsellor privately does not place you on a national register, does not generate a medical diagnosis, and is not recorded in your public healthcare record. There is, in fact, no national register of counselling clients in Singapore for you to be placed on. Psychotherapy and counselling are not required to be licensed under the Healthcare Services Act, and practitioners here hold their registration with professional bodies instead — our practitioners are registered with the Singapore Association for Counselling, the Singapore Psychological Society, the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and USATAA. Those registrations govern how we are required to practise. This is one of the real differences between private counselling and care received through a hospital or polyclinic, where notes form part of a clinical record shared across the healthcare system for sound medical reasons. Neither route is the wrong one — but if the record is what has been stopping you, it is worth knowing they are not the same.
Where confidentiality has limits. It is not absolute, and any therapist who tells you otherwise is overselling. Our policy sets out three exceptions, and they are narrow: a serious risk of harm to you or another person; a situation where a child or vulnerable person may be at risk; and a court or other authority lawfully requiring disclosure. Where it is safe and practical to do so, your therapist will talk to you about a disclosure before making it. These three are the only circumstances in which we would disclose something without your consent. In addition, therapists discuss their work in clinical supervision — a regular, structured conversation with a senior clinician about how a piece of work is going. It is a requirement of the professional bodies we register with, and it exists to keep the quality of your care up rather than to check up on you. What goes into it is the situation and how we are approaching it. We do not normally share your name or identifying details. Your supervisor is working on the shape of the problem and whether our approach to it is the right one, not on who you are. Supervisors are bound by confidentiality themselves.
And the thing people are often too embarrassed to ask. You are allowed to ask all of this before you book. Ask us what is recorded, who has access, what happens if you stop coming, what happens to your notes afterwards.
The harder question: young people and parental consent
On 11 November 2026, MOH opened a public consultation on proposed guidelines for young people's access to mental health services. It runs until 6pm on 8 December 2026.
The numbers MOH published alongside it are worth noting - around one in three young people aged 10 to 18 in Singapore reported symptoms such as depression or anxiety — and 70% of those with symptoms did not seek professional support.
At present there is no minimum age at which a young person in Singapore can consent to mental health services on their own, so practice varies widely between schools, community organisations, hospitals and private clinics. Under the new MOH proposals, parental consent would generally be required for under-13s for screening, non-diagnostic assessment and psychotherapy. Where parental consent cannot be obtained, a professional could still provide services if they judge it in the young person's best interest, and the young person is at least 13 and mature enough to make an informed decision. Where a young person does not want their parents consulted, or parents refuse services the young person wants, the guidance is that professionals should explore the reasons behind the refusal rather than simply apply the rule.
Speaking in the Singapore Parliament on 3 November, the minister put the aim plainly: "A young person stepping forward to seek help should not have to worry that their parents will be informed immediately."
A teenager who is struggling sometimes cannot talk to their parents about it — occasionally because the family is part of what is hard, more often because they are protecting their parents from worry, or are ashamed, or simply do not have the words yet. For that young person, needing to ask permission can mean not asking at all. Young people should be able to come through a safe door, with families involved appropriately as care progresses.
And parents are not an obstacle to be routed around. They know their child, they carry the responsibility, and being shut out of something serious is frightening in its own right. Most parents we meet are not trying to control their teenager's care. They are trying to find out what is going on and how they can help their loved one.
In our experience these two things are less opposed than they look. A young person who starts with one or two private conversations very often chooses to bring a parent in — once they have worked out what they want to say and have some confidence it will land well. The confidential beginning is frequently what makes the family conversation possible.
For what it is worth, this is close to how we already work, and close to what MOH is proposing. For children under 13, a parent or guardian consents. Between 13 and 17, a young person can consent to how their own information is handled, provided we are satisfied they understand what they are agreeing to. Parents receive a general account of themes, progress and recommendations — what is going on and what would help — rather than a session-by-session record of what their child said. Where something has to be disclosed to keep a child or another person safe, we tell a parent or guardian without delay. That balance is not a loophole. It is what lets a 15-year-old speak freely enough for the work to be useful, while their parents stay properly informed about how they are doing.
If you have a view on where that line should sit — as a parent, a young person, a teacher or a clinician — the consultation is open until 6pm on 8 December 2026, and you can respond at go.gov.sg/youth-mental-health-access. Guidelines should be written with the people they affect.
A bigger system still needs an easy first step
A national centre and a rebuilt hospital matter but almost nobody's first contact with mental health support is a psychiatric hospital. It is a GP appointment where the real problem comes out in the last two minutes. It is a school counsellor. It is mindline 1771, which the minister noted handles around 9,000 calls a month. It is a private therapist found through a google search at midnight.
And the number of youths seen in the community has more than doubled, which tells you that the front door — not the hospital — is where the volume is.
So it is worth being concrete about what that first step actually involves, because the imagined version is almost always worse than the real one. A first session is mostly you talking and someone listening carefully. You will be asked what brought you in, what has been going on, and what you would like to be different. You are not required to have a tidy account of it; "I don't really know, I just feel awful" is a perfectly normal place to start. Nobody examines you. Nobody puts a label on you. You are not committing to anything beyond the hour you have booked.
At the end, you will usually have a sense of whether this person is someone you could talk to. That is the only question the first session needs to answer. If the answer is no, that is useful information too — fit between therapist and client does matter, and looking for a better fit sometimes is a sensible response.
If you have been putting off therapy and counselling
Some people have been meaning to do something about this for years. Not in crisis — just tired, or flat, or arguing with their partner about the same thing on a loop, or watching their teenager go quiet and not knowing how to start.
If part of what has held you back was the worry the minister named this week, we hope this blog has been useful. Therapy is not a promise that things will improve, and no honest therapist will offer you one. It is a structured conversation with someone trained to have it, and for a great many people it turns out to be worth having.
If you would like to talk to us, our team and what we offer are set out on Services and Fees, and you can reach us through our contact page. We see clients at The Octagon, 105 Cecil Street, and online for clients outside Singapore.
If you are not ready to book anything — which is entirely reasonable — mindline 1771 is free, available around the clock, and a perfectly good place to start.
If you are in immediate danger or thinking about harming yourself, please call 995, or the Samaritans of Singapore on 1767.
Balanced Life Psychotherapy & Counselling provides psychotherapy, counselling and assessment services. This article is general information about publicly announced policy and about how confidentiality works in private practice. It is not medical advice, a diagnosis, or a description of what therapy will achieve for any individual.
