Health and Wellness Minister Sabrina Turner is urging the community to pay close attention to mental health, as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in mental health-related issues.
“I think it is impossible for anyone to say that they have not experienced mental health challenges at some point in their lives, and certainly not over the past year and several months,” the minister said in her message on Sunday, marking World Mental Health Day.
The theme for this year’s World Mental Health Day is “Mental health care for all: let’s make it a reality”.
Turner said COVID-19 has had a major impact on people’s mental health globally.
“Certainly within our region, increasing new cases of mental health conditions and worsening pre-existing ones. Some groups, including health and other frontline workers, students, people living alone, and those with pre-existing mental health conditions, have been particularly affected,” she pointed out in her written and audio message.
“Now more than ever, as the COVID-19 pandemic highlights and deepens long-standing mental health challenges in our Islands, it is essential that we work to make mental health care a reality for all,” she added.
Turner said she was happy to see “the stigma against mental illness seems to be diminishing in our community”.
“There is a greater understanding that anyone, anywhere can be affected – just as close to one billion people around the world are,” she said.
During her tenure as minister for health and wellness, Turner said she will do her “utmost to ensure that the people in our Islands living with mental health conditions have access to quality community-based mental health services and that their rights and best interests are protected”.
She said steps are being taken in the right direction, “with the increased provision of mental health counseling and educational psychologist support in schools, and our commitment to construct the Cayman Islands’ long-awaited residential mental health facility”.
Mental health-related disorders account for more than one third of all disabilities in the Americas, she said, and nearly 100,000 people die by suicide each year in our region, she said.
“We as Caymanians know the intense sadness we all experience when we lose one of our own to depression and suicide, as small and interlinked as our community is. It is a pain which reverberates throughout our Islands,” she said.
Government’s Strategic Policy Statement has specific objectives aimed at providing “more holistic and available mental health services for the people of the Cayman Islands”.
“Such as providing a specialised youth mental health facility; promoting better mental health and special needs insurance coverage so everyone has access to mental health care; and promoting programmes that offer greater work/life balance and which support family systems,” she said.
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