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Thursday, July 24, 2025

More teachers, students seek counselling since COVID

by

Anna-Lisa Paul
1639 days ago
20210127

The ef­fects of the COVID-19 virus and sub­se­quent lock­down have had an ad­verse im­pact on the men­tal health of teach­ers and stu­dents in T&T.

Re­veal­ing there has been an in­crease in the num­ber of teach­ing pro­fes­sion­als and stu­dents ac­cess­ing the Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (EAP) with­in re­cent months, an of­fi­cial of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MOE) yes­ter­day al­so con­firmed, “We have a lot main­ly com­ing from our sec­ondary stu­dents.”

Speak­ing dur­ing a brief­ing at the MOE, School So­cial Work Spe­cial­ist Na­tal­ie Robin­son-Arnold re­vealed, “It comes back to that whole ad­just­ment of be­ing at home, be­ing re­moved from the so­cial at­mos­phere that they are used to in the school sys­tem…has cre­at­ed a lit­tle in­sta­bil­i­ty in our chil­dren and ba­si­cal­ly, it is gen­er­al be­hav­iour that our par­ents have reached out to us about and the abil­i­ty to cope with the stress­es that come with COVID-19 and the ad­just­ment to the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.”

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly added, “In dis­cus­sions with the EAP which pro­vides ser­vices for the teach­ers, they have in­di­cat­ed they have seen an in­crease in the num­ber of teach­ers ac­cess­ing their ser­vices.”

She said this had been at­trib­uted to the fact that teach­ers are un­der­go­ing stress with the tran­si­tion from a class­room set­ting to a vir­tu­al fo­rum.

Gads­by-Dol­ly con­tin­ued, “They are al­so say­ing that be­cause teach­ers are at home, they feel a lit­tle more em­pow­ered to come out and get the ser­vice be­cause they are not at school and no­body is ask­ing them where you go­ing and why you are go­ing to EAP.”

The min­is­ter claimed more pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures were be­ing adopt­ed by teach­ers, “com­ing in and speak­ing and sort­ing out the is­sues re­lat­ing to tran­si­tion­ing.”

De­scrib­ing the deaths of two boys aged nine and 14 in the last few days, both Gads­by-Dol­ly and Robin­son-Arnold said it was un­for­tu­nate and trag­ic.

In the case of both stu­dents, Robin­son-Arnold said, “The stu­dents did not ex­pe­ri­ence men­tal health is­sues. It is ba­si­cal­ly the use of so­cial me­dia.”

In­di­cat­ing they would con­tin­ue to sen­si­tize stu­dents and par­ents about the use of so­cial me­dia, she added, “We have our hot­lines out and we have par­ents who are con­tact­ing the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (SSSD) via these hot­line num­bers, where they en­counter chal­lenges with their chil­dren, or they too are stress­ful and are un­able to cope so they could best man­age their chil­dren.”

Gads­by-Dol­ly said the two stu­dents had not been re­ferred to the SSSD for as­sis­tance and the MOE was not aware of the full cir­cum­stances in each in­stance.

Asked to com­ment on the Black-Out/Pass Out Chal­lenge pop­u­lar­ized via Tik-Tok the min­is­ter said as par­ents, greater aware­ness had to be paid to what chil­dren were us­ing these de­vices to ac­cess as what might seem like harm­less fun for chil­dren, could have dis­as­trous con­se­quences.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said the MOE would al­so be do­ing its part to alert par­ents and teach­ers and guardians as to the dan­gers as­so­ci­at­ed with on­line ac­cess.


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