Since All Souls’ Day is around the corner, grieving and sadness are again in discussion. 

Actor Alden Richards, in a recent interview with DAILY TRIBUNE for World Mental Health Day last 10 October, advised those experiencing mental health problems: “Everything is fleeting. Let’s strengthen our faith, especially those who are experiencing mental health problems at the moment.”

He also had suggestions for those looking after their loved ones with mental health struggles: “Assist them in a not-so-hard way. Going through a phase like that, the more that you pressure that person who’s undergoing a situation and circumstance, all the more that they don’t get healed and all the more that they’re going to feel like they’re not normal. So don’t make them not normal,” the McDonald’s brand ambassador said partly in Filipino.

“Give them space. Let us make them rest. You’ll never know if in those small ways, that’s how you can make the person’s situation better.”

It can be recalled that last May, Alden confessed to have undergone a six-month-long battle with depression last year for reasons he did not want to specify.

A good way to promote a healthy mental disposition is through animal or pet therapy. A 2023 American Psychiatric Association poll found out that pets present many mental health benefits, including decreased anxiety, stress, perceptions of pain and worries; while augmenting feelings of social support, stimulation, motivation and focus. Having pets also prove helpful in conditions like dementia, depression, autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and schizophrenia.

“There’s five of them in Laguna,” Alden said of his dogs, some of them aspins and some of them given as presents. He stressed that he does not buy pets. 

“I suggest that if you’d get dogs, you’d not treat them as dogs. Treat them as family. That’s why I don’t put dog collars on them. They’re free-moving at my house. I don’t put leashes on them. They can go wherever they want to. But I make sure they’re trained.”

According to him, “The deeper meaning of ‘pet’ is ‘family.’”

“So for me, how you treat your family, that’s how you should also treat your pets at home. Because if you’re just going to treat them bad, don’t bother getting a pet. Don’t give them a substandard life just so you have something to flex (on social media). Let’s not give that burden to our pets. If you want to have a pet — regardless of whether it is a dog, fish, cat, let’s treat them as family.”

Whether it is through pet therapy or other methods, Alden, who is now more into cycling, urged anyone with mental health dilemmas to “find your own outlet.”

“It’s not other people who would tell you what you have to do to cope. It’s how you feel,” he said. “It’s about gut feel, that no matter how hard our situation is, me, I believe that it’s the Lord and yourself that can help you! No one else! Only God and you — only those two factors. So you have to be strong!”