Bar­ba­dos will host the 69th an­nu­al health re­search con­fer­ence of the Trinidad-based Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) in May.

The May 7-9 event, will be held un­der the theme “Men­tal Health: The Hid­den Pan­dem­ic” and will bring to­geth­er re­searchers, pol­i­cy­mak­ers, and health pro­fes­sion­als from the re­gion and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Bar­ba­dos Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO), Dr. Ken­neth George, said that dur­ing and since the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic, health of­fi­cials here have seen a 100 per cent in­crease in per­sons seek­ing men­tal health ser­vices, par­tic­u­lar­ly younger peo­ple.

He said there has al­so been an in­crease in Alzheimer’s and neu­rocog­ni­tive dis­ease in old­er per­sons. These af­fect over half of el­der­ly per­sons by age 80, and up to 70 per cent by age 85.

Dr. George said that the rise in men­tal health con­di­tions wasn’t unique to Bar­ba­dos but the trend could be seen through­out the re­gion.

“We need to be strate­gic in how we reach [young peo­ple]. We are not go­ing to reach them through the poly­clin­ics or the old­er meth­ods of ser­vice de­liv­ery. We have to be strate­gic and reach them where they are and un­der­stand their com­mu­ni­ties to de­liv­er ap­pro­pri­ate health­care,” he said, adding that the lo­cal au­thor­i­ties were col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) to de­vel­op an Ado­les­cent Pol­i­cy, which is now at an ad­vanced stage.

CARPHA’s ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, Dr. Lisa In­dar said the re­gion­al health agency is ex­pect­ed to part­ner with youth or­gan­i­sa­tions for the con­fer­ence to make sure “the youth have a seat at the ta­ble”, so their voic­es can be heard where pol­i­cy is con­cerned, not­ing that some cir­cum­stances may im­pact the men­tal health of youth dif­fer­ent­ly from that of old­er per­sons.

“We are com­mit­ted, not just to Bar­ba­dos but with PA­HO, to look at how we can de­vel­op a tar­get­ed pro­gramme that al­lows us to ad­dress what is hap­pen­ing with youth men­tal health,” she added.

CARPHA said that this year’s an­nu­al health re­search con­fer­ence and its pre-con­fer­ence events, in­clud­ing meet­ings and train­ing work­shops, will be a plat­form for shar­ing ground­break­ing re­search and clin­i­cal find­ings that can sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­flu­ence pub­lic health poli­cies.

It will serve as a fo­rum for es­tab­lish­ing men­tor­ships, part­ner­ships, and col­lab­o­ra­tions. Pri­or to the con­fer­ence, Caribbean chief med­ical of­fi­cers will meet to ad­dress press­ing pub­lic health agen­das.