Experts: Treat mental health and violence as linked crises

Caribbean health officials called for an integrated regional approach to tackle escalating mental health crises and their ties to violence, warning that piecemeal interventions risk exacerbating both issues at the expense of public well-being .

Dr Horace Cox, Director of Surveillance, Disease Prevention and Control at the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA), told Barbados TODAY that while officials were working to confront threats like mosquito-transmitted illnesses, mental health continues to be a significant concern—particularly given its link to rising violence.

He was speaking on the sidelines of a regional workshop at the Blue Horizon Hotel that focused on strengthening the region’s capacity to predict, detect and respond to vector-borne diseases (VBDs) such as dengue, chikungunya, and Zika.

Dr Cox said: “We feel that [mental health] is an area which is often neglected, we feel that the issue is really very pervasive and that we really need to have robust systems that will help us,” he said. “The reality is that it requires us to address something that really prevents us from getting there, which would be the stigma and discrimination that’s often involved.”

He cited the COVID-19 pandemic as an example of how even essential health measures can take a toll if officials are not mindful in their communications and interactions with the public.

He said, “During the pandemic, of course, this would have taken a toll on many. It’s documented in different countries across the world where, from simple measures that were put in place, for example, ensuring that there was social distancing for the period where especially vaccines weren’t as accessible, this took a toll on persons from a mental health perspective, and it’s documented and it’s shared in the literature.”

Dr Cox emphasised the importance of “systems thinking” in designing public health policies: “We could have unintended harm, and the unintended harm at times could result in negative mental health outcomes. So it’s important for us to think of it in a very holistic way and ensure that in our policies we can have mitigating actions for any risks that are identified in the policies that we develop, so that it won’t result in many instances of unintended harm, and mental health being one of those.”

In addition to mental health, CARPHA is also categorising violence as a public health issue demanding a multi-sectoral response.

“We are looking at violence as a public health issue in the Caribbean region. We are doing this in collaboration with other public health actors…. We see that it is a mental health issue and that it also affects throughout the life cycle and often it’s predetermined by what might have happened in one’s childhood and the culture within the community,” Dr Cox said.

He added: “So there’s one thing that we know for sure is that it requires a comprehensive approach which cuts across not only the individual level but the community level and the societal level, and we need to employ the use of many models, for example, the socio-ecological model in terms of some of the interventions that we design to be able to address this as a public health issue in a comprehensive way.” 

shamarblunt@barbadostoday.bb