Becoming an adult: The mental health abyss

RUTH Komathi, 26, did not know that she was living with a mental illness when she was in her teens. After her brother left to study overseas when she was 15, she felt the responsibility of caring for her parents fall on her shoulders. "I think that was self-imposed. Thinking about it, I never really talked about things that affected me and perhaps, that was my breaking point," she tells The Business Times.

During Ms Komathi's O-level year, she began to have recurrent headaches. By the time she was in junior college, she was crying throughout t…