As hun­dreds of cruise ship em­ploy­ees anx­ious­ly await re­unions with their fam­i­lies, clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist Dr Kati­ja Khan says there is a sig­nif­i­cant men­tal health threat to them She says there is anx­i­ety build­ing up among the em­ploy­ees strand­ed around the world af­ter coun­tries closed their bor­ders due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Yes­ter­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young fi­nal­ly an­nounced Gov­ern­ment is work­ing on a plan to al­low cruise ship em­ploy­ees and Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies stu­dents a safe re-en­try in­to T&T.

But de­spon­dent and scep­ti­cal crew mem­bers still want to know when they will touch home soil.
Khan said the like­ly im­pact of be­ing strand­ed at sea could in­clude height­ened lev­els of dis­tress, frus­tra­tion, fear, wor­ry, ag­i­ta­tion and de­spair, which are neg­a­tive emo­tion­al states. She said this will af­fect their func­tion­ing and al­so puts them at in­creased risk for men­tal health ill­ness­es like clin­i­cal de­pres­sion and anx­i­ety dis­or­ders.
“Stress can af­fect per­sons psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, cog­ni­tive­ly, phys­i­cal­ly and so­cial­ly. They may find their sleep, ap­petite, en­er­gy lev­els, mood, mo­ti­va­tion, per­for­mance, in­ter­ac­tions with oth­ers, phys­i­cal health and sub­stance use be­ing im­pact­ed,” Khan said.

“The men­tal health threat to strand­ed cruise ship em­ploy­ees is a sig­nif­i­cant one and has al­so been linked to the death by sui­cide of some em­ploy­ees from oth­er coun­tries around the world. As such, their cop­ing and re­silience is of para­mount im­por­tance.”

Khan ex­plained that un­like in­di­vid­u­als quar­an­tined in lo­cal fa­cil­i­ties, these em­ploy­ees do not have a clear time­line of when their con­fine­ment will end, mak­ing their sit­u­a­tion even more chal­leng­ing.

“I imag­ine many of them feel aban­doned, pun­ished and be­trayed as they strug­gle to un­der­stand why oth­er cit­i­zens are be­ing repa­tri­at­ed and they aren’t. They may find it un­fair and un­jus­ti­fi­able and as such, strug­gle to cope,” she said.
Some of the cruise work­ers’ fam­i­ly mem­bers reached out to Guardian Me­dia in the past week shar­ing their con­cerns for loved ones on the ships.

Khan said fam­i­ly mem­bers who try to ad­vo­cate for their strand­ed loved ones will al­so be af­fect­ed.

For em­ploy­ees, the cur­rent stres­sor is an in­def­i­nite quar­an­tine but they al­so face po­ten­tial job loss and loss of in­come as the cruise ship in­dus­try has been hit hard dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. She rec­om­mend­ed the cruise ship com­pa­nies and the Gov­ern­ment share as much in­for­ma­tion as pos­si­ble on repa­tri­a­tion to mit­i­gate anx­i­ety and stress. 
“This will help them man­age their ex­pec­ta­tions in a healthy way and aid their un­der­stand­ing and cop­ing,” Khan said.

“This com­mu­ni­ca­tion should be dis­pensed in a sen­si­tive and com­pas­sion­ate way that is cog­nizant of both the na­tion­al health and safe­ty con­cerns as well as the cit­i­zens’ need to be repa­tri­at­ed and the neg­a­tive im­pact on their well-be­ing of be­ing in­def­i­nite­ly strand­ed at sea.” (KF)