Mental health crisis has been reported as the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Grief at the loss of loved ones, shock at the loss of jobs, isolation of restrictions of movements, difficult family dynamics, and uncertainty and fear of the future are just few of the psychological sufferings pointed out by the World Health Organization. To ensure that people are mentally healthy, the government takes mental health services as essential part of the responses to the pandemic. Private organizations and (...) academic institutions also take part in this movement to safeguard the mental well-being of people in the community. Despite the efforts to prevent and remediate mental health crisis, limited number of people seek professional help. While we can assume that they might have been adjusting well to the anxieties brought about by Covid-19 pandemic, we also acknowledge the fact that a number of cases of depression and suicide had been reported in the locality for the past five months. This paper aims to provide expositions of the possible variables for young Filipino College Students’ underutilization of mental health services as well as their other possible sources of inner strength and resiliency during the Covid-19 pandemic. Help seeking behaviors of the Young Filipino students in Cor Jesu College will be explored using the lens of uncertainty and anticipation model of anxiety of Grupe and Nitschke, and resilience as a cultural variable among Filipinos. (shrink)

The ethics of technology is not as effective as it should. Despite decades of ethical discussion, development and use of new technologies continues apace without much regard to those discussions. Economic and other forces are too powerful. More focus needs to be placed on the values that underpin social attitudes to technology. By seriously looking at Indigenous thought and comparing it with the typical Western way of seeing the world, we can gain a better understanding of our own views. The (...) Indigenous Filipino worldview provides us with a platform for assessing our own core values and suggests modifications to those values. It also indicates ways for broadening and altering the focus of the ethics of technology to make it more effective in helping us to use technologies in ways more conducive to human well-being. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in disruption of work and other social activities of so many people. Some were forced to stay at home and many decided to stay at home for fear of being infected with the virus. This phenomenon brought different reactions and even mental stress to many people. However, there were people who turned this kind of tragedy into creative work. This paper discusses the experiences and insights of known plant lovers in Digos City, Davao del Sur (...) Philippines. Digos City is one of the heavily affected places during the series of earthquakes that jolted Davao del Sur last year. While people are still recovering, COVID-19 added an additional burden to the residents. In this paper, we argue that their decision to focus on gardening was not only to fight boredom and to divert their attention during lockdown but this was their way of maintaining their well-being by participating in the on-going work of creation and recreation and to rise from the tragedy. We further argue that it might be good that this creative work will go beyond home gardening and beyond pots and slowly extend to creative work for environmental protection and preservation through more active engagements into reforestation activities. (shrink)