Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

A Ro­man Catholic priest has called for greater in­ter­ven­tion to sup­port men fac­ing what he de­scribed as a wors­en­ing men­tal health cri­sis in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Fa­ther Ger­ard Mc­Glone made the ap­peal dur­ing a Samar­i­tan Move­ment sem­i­nar at the St Joseph RC Re­treat Cen­tre in Scar­bor­ough last Thurs­day. The two-day pro­gramme, adapt­ed from the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO), trained par­tic­i­pants from var­i­ous re­li­gious de­nom­i­na­tions in adult men­tal health aware­ness and sui­cide first aid, equip­ping them to bet­ter sup­port their com­mu­ni­ties.

Mc­Glone said fi­nan­cial hard­ship, par­tic­u­lar­ly un­em­ploy­ment, is wors­en­ing men­tal health chal­lenges and con­tribut­ing to a rise in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

“The da­ta from the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty has val­i­dat­ed what we’re see­ing world­wide, that we have a men­tal health cri­sis that is get­ting worse be­cause of the fi­nan­cial cri­sis and lev­els of vi­o­lence, abuse and ne­glect,” he said.

He not­ed that church­es across Trinidad and To­ba­go are wit­ness­ing in­creas­ing lev­els of abuse, crime, vi­o­lence and sui­cide. While women are more like­ly to con­tem­plate sui­cide, he said deaths by sui­cide re­main dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly high­er among men.

To ad­dress that gap, Mc­Glone said the church has de­vel­oped pro­grammes fo­cused on men’s well-be­ing, in­clud­ing their men­tal, emo­tion­al and spir­i­tu­al health.

“That’s a fun­da­men­tal gap that we’re try­ing to fill,” he said.

Mc­Glone be­lieves dif­fer­ences in how boys and girls are raised in­flu­ence how they seek help and ex­press emo­tions lat­er in life.

“We grow up with very dif­fer­ent ways of ex­press­ing our emo­tions and ask­ing for help. Part of it is our own sense of mas­culin­i­ty that I have to do it alone,” he said.

He added that so­ci­etal ex­pec­ta­tions of­ten place pres­sure on men to be providers, re­main strong through ad­ver­si­ty and care for oth­ers, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for them to show vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty.

“It’s that sense that men re­al­ly try to care, but in car­ing too much, they for­get about them­selves.”

Pro­gramme fa­cil­i­ta­tor John-Michael Mad­er urged par­tic­i­pants to re­spect con­fi­den­tial­i­ty when as­sist­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic. He said trust is es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant in small com­mu­ni­ties such as To­ba­go, where breach­es of con­fi­dence can re­in­force the stig­ma sur­round­ing men­tal health is­sues.

Mc­Glone, how­ev­er, said there are cir­cum­stances in which con­fi­den­tial­i­ty may be bro­ken by a first re­spon­der. He ex­plained that coun­sel­lors should in­form in­di­vid­u­als seek­ing help that if they pose a risk of harm­ing them­selves, a child or an­oth­er per­son, au­thor­i­ties may need to be no­ti­fied.

“Once you as­sess a high risk of sui­ci­dal­i­ty, you have no eth­i­cal choice but to ac­com­pa­ny the per­son in try­ing to get help. The per­son may refuse, but it is im­por­tant they’re in­formed of the lim­its of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty,” he said.

Mc­Glone al­so stressed the im­por­tance of faith-based or­gan­i­sa­tions en­gag­ing di­rect­ly with com­mu­ni­ties rather than lim­it­ing their out­reach to the pul­pit.

“Faith, for us, is seen in ac­tion. We have to get in­to the com­mu­ni­ty. We have to re­al­ly give pas­toral min­is­ters the tools to be the best ad­vo­cates for peo­ple’s men­tal health, to break down the stig­ma and show a car­ing pres­ence,” he said.

Dr Ali­na Williams, di­rec­tor of the De­part­ment of Well­ness, Pre­ven­tion and Health Pro­mo­tion, at­tend­ed the event and was avail­able to sup­port par­tic­i­pants who may have been af­fect­ed by the sub­ject mat­ter.

Mc­Glone said more than 260 peo­ple in Trinidad have al­ready com­plet­ed the train­ing pro­gramme and that To­ba­go’s par­tic­i­pa­tion would help ease pres­sure on the pub­lic health sys­tem by ex­pand­ing com­mu­ni­ty-based sup­port net­works.