Mere months ago, in Jan­u­ary, our coun­try lost a 14-year-old stu­dent to sui­cide. Ref­er­enc­ing the Sun­day Guardian ar­ti­cle, “Ac­cord­ing to the po­lice re­port, the stu­dent and a rel­a­tive al­leged­ly ar­gued over his school­work be­fore she left the house to pur­chase food. Up­on her re­turn about an hour-and-a-half lat­er, she found him with a ban­dana wrapped around his neck and tied to a door­knob.”

If you’re go­ing through menopause dur­ing the COVID-19 cri­sis, or if some­one you love is, you may be won­der­ing if the nov­el Coro­n­avirus af­fects menopausal women.

Poly­cys­tic ovary syn­drome (PCOS) is a con­di­tion in which the ovaries pro­duce an ab­nor­mal amount of an­dro­gens, male sex hor­mones that are usu­al­ly present in women in small amounts. The name poly­cys­tic ovary syn­drome de­scribes the nu­mer­ous small cysts (flu­id-filled sacs) that form in the ovaries. How­ev­er, some women with this dis­or­der do not have cysts, while some women with­out the dis­or­der do de­vel­op cysts.

You have wait­ed nine months for your new­born to ar­rive. You ate well, nav­i­gat­ed the anx­i­ety of be­ing preg­nant dur­ing a pan­dem­ic, took your pre­na­tal vi­t­a­mins, at­tend­ed ap­point­ments and did your best to keep your­self healthy. Now that your ba­by has ar­rived, how do you keep him or her healthy dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic?

Tylah Ariel

Andrea De Silva

Ty­lah Ariel is a Trinida­di­an/Amer­i­can pop-al­ter­na­tive singer and song­writer whose sooth­ing vo­cals have been com­pared to that of Sade and Jhené Aiko. Her in­tro­spec­tive lyrics are of­ten­times in­spired by her own life’s events or those clos­est to her.

Jenelle Thongs' strut on the cat­walk is fierce. When she speaks she ex­udes friend­ly con­fi­dence, ever so of­ten eas­ing in­to a smile that ful­ly re­veals strik­ing white teeth against her smooth, ebony skin. The Miss Supra­na­tion­al Trinidad and To­ba­go 2020 ti­tle­hold­er ad­mits that she has come a long way from her child­hood per­sona of a lit­tle tomboy who felt un­com­fort­able in her own skin.

Trag­i­cal­ly, sui­cide is not as rare as one may think. In 2018, glob­al da­ta from the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) re­port­ed an es­ti­mat­ed 793,000 sui­cide deaths world­wide. Most were men.

Near­ly 450 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide are cur­rent­ly liv­ing with a men­tal health chal­lenge, yet near­ly two thirds of per­sons with a known men­tal ill­ness nev­er choose to seek treat­ment. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has had a pro­found im­pact on the men­tal health of per­sons of all ages, sta­tus and walks of life.

To say that Suzette Louwe has ruf­fled some feath­ers on the lo­cal po­lit­i­cal and so­cial land­scape might be an un­der­state­ment. The busi­ness­woman-turned-pop­u­lar so­cial me­dia ac­tivist is in no way shy about voic­ing her opin­ion, even if it means earn­ing the ire of some very im­por­tant politi­cians. She be­lieves that the po­lit­i­cal and so­cial struc­tures in T&T need a re­vamp­ing...and that she is ful­ly equipped for the job.

The trends are chang­ing, we are ob­serv­ing younger per­sons suc­cumb­ing to COVID-19 and it de­rails us.

Let’s face it: there’s a de­bil­i­tat­ing virus out there and it’s not go­ing away any­time soon. And that means we all must make a lot of de­ci­sions that in­volve per­son­al risk. And for many of these dai­ly de­ci­sions, there is no sin­gle right an­swer. While we take guid­ance from Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol (CDC), World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion rec­om­men­da­tions, or ex­pert ad­vice from Health­care pro­fes­sion­als, it ALL comes down to our per­son­al abil­i­ty to as­sess our RISKS.