Four per cent of T&T’s population experience suicidal thoughts, says Health Minister Dr Fuad Khan. Global statistics, he added, had shown depression claimed 3,000 lives daily. The minister was speaking at a seminar yesterday, titled Addressing Depression and Mental Health at the Workplace, hosted by the Employers Solution Centre, Aranguez.
“Four per cent of our population experiences suicidal thoughts, and that is high, and when you look at that and you do the maths, you would find that out of the four per cent, a large amount is working people,” the Health Minister said. He said the four per cent included children who suffered from depression. Saying there had been recent discussions about the social determinants of health, Khan said there were factors which caused unhealthy patterns of behaviour that ultimately reduced a country to poverty.
“Believe it or not, depression and mental illnesses rank high in those strata of social determinants. If somebody cannot function at work, then they would have to be removed. That person may be the only breadwinner of a family. “So it works out as a social determinant of health. If there is four per cent of the population, at that level the financial cost to a country is great.”
People who suffered from mental illnesses, however, were still stigmatised by wider society. Families of those people were also shunned and deemed “mad”, he said. Khan said the Health Ministry was trying its best to destigmatise mental illness through educational campaigns. “Employees in any working environment are the best and biggest assets of a workplace. If the employee is not functioning properly, that company would not be moving as effectively as it should and profits would decline.”
He said part of the ministry’s agenda also was tackling addiction, which sometimes went hand-in-hand with mental illnesses. “When a person is depressed or is swinging from highs to lows, that person is placed on medication if diagnosed properly, or might take drugs or alcohol to feel better. “It could also be prescription drug abuse. Not only do we have to address mental problems, we also have to address the treatment aspect of it.”
He said the ministry would seek to establish therapy centres in Caura, Couva and Arima which would serve as rehabilitation facilties. “These would be first-world, state-of-the art rehabilitation centres rather than places for in-house patients. “People must not be ashamed because they have a mental illness.” He added there also were plans to construct an adolescent and child trauma centre, specifically targeting children with psychiatric problems.