ABSTRACTThis paper examines the official pedagogic discourse communicating the explicit inclusion of Mental Health (MH) education in Singapore’s revised 2021 Character and Citizenship (CCE2021) curriculum within Singapore’s state-driven educational context of decentralised centralism. By adapting Basil Bernstein’s theoretical work on pedagogic discourse – using William Tyler’s typology of Bernstein’s ‘Pedagogic Codes’ and ‘Official Pedagogic Identities’ – our findings reveal how MH in CCE2021 projects different, simultaneous student identities. These include retrospective identities of students as resilient, community-minded citizens; prospective identities of students as vulnerable cyber users requiring explicit guidance for their future-readiness; de-centred therapeutic identities of students as reflective, self-actualising students requiring psychological safety; and de-centred market identities of students as trained advocates and community first responders. Together, they generate a tension where therapeutic identities are positioned as prerequisite to the other identities, subsuming individual well-being within community well-being, and conflating the intrinsic good of personal resilience with instrumental notions of future-readiness. This expresses a paradox where state-student social relations are both transformed and continued, as concerns of student confidentiality and efficacy of help-seeking efforts persist. Overall, we contend the educational reform of MH in CCE2021 accommodates rather than reconciles progressive concerns of youth mental health with neoliberal state imperatives.