The re­cent­ly an­nounced $59.2 bil­lion Na­tion­al Bud­get by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo has by far and large got­ten wide pub­lic praise. One cit­i­zen even likened Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to the god­dess Lak­sh­mi, bring­ing pros­per­i­ty and hope dur­ing the Di­vali sea­son.

While the 2026 Bud­get is so­cial­ly gen­er­ous, we must re­main cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic. Many past bud­gets looked promis­ing on pa­per but fal­tered in ex­e­cu­tion.

With oil prices fore­cast at US$73.25 per bar­rel, some wor­ry this as­sump­tion may be a bit am­bi­tious. We will have to wait and see if this new po­lit­i­cal team can live up to the dif­fi­cult task of keep­ing us afloat in these dif­fi­cult and un­cer­tain eco­nom­ic times.

That said, many pub­lic ser­vants, farm­ers, re­tirees, and mo­torists us­ing Su­per gaso­line, and many po­ten­tial car own­ers who could on­ly af­ford the less ex­pen­sive for­eign used ve­hi­cles, were sat­is­fied with this ad­min­is­tra­tion’s first bud­get.

One al­lo­ca­tion in the Bud­get stood out—the $8.214 bil­lion ear­marked for the Min­istry of Health—the high­est in over a decade.

As a long-time ad­vo­cate for pub­lic health and fis­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, I was al­so en­thused by the in­crease in du­ties on al­co­hol and to­bac­co. This mea­sure serves dual goals: curb­ing harm­ful con­sump­tion and free­ing up valu­able for­eign ex­change for es­sen­tial items like phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and med­ical equip­ment.

These in­creased du­ties, there­fore, are both a pub­lic health and eco­nom­ic ne­ces­si­ty.

But what moved me most this week was the vi­sion for men­tal well­ness laid out by Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe dur­ing the T&T As­so­ci­a­tion of Psy­chol­o­gists (TTAP) con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day—just a day af­ter World Men­tal Health Day.

TTAP pres­i­dent Kel­ly Mc­Far­lane opened the con­fer­ence and spoke of the need for dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines to com­bine to tack­le the coun­try’s men­tal health is­sues.

I brought greet­ings from the As­so­ci­a­tion of Psy­chi­a­trists of T&T (APTT) and quot­ed fright­en­ing WHO glob­al fig­ures which speak of 720,000 deaths by sui­cide an­nu­al­ly, as well as sui­cide be­ing the fourth high­est cause of death amongst 15-29-year-olds. These are ma­jor con­cerns amongst men­tal health ad­vo­cates.

Dr Bo­doe pre­sent­ed a wide-rang­ing, all-in­clu­sive men­tal health agen­da that in­cludes:

• De­crim­i­nal­is­ing at­tempt­ed sui­cide

• Ex­pand­ing com­mu­ni­ty men­tal health ser­vices and 24/7 cri­sis re­sponse teams across all RHAs

• Es­tab­lish­ing psy­chi­atric units in ma­jor hos­pi­tals, in­clud­ing Point Fortin, PoS Gen­er­al, San­gre Grande, and at Re­mand Yard

• Align­ing the Men­tal Health Act with in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights con­ven­tions such as the CR­PD

• In­tro­duc­ing school-based men­tal health lit­er­a­cy pro­grammes and on­go­ing train­ing for front­line work­ers

• Re­mind­ing peo­ple about dig­i­tal sup­port plat­forms like find­care.tt, teen­care.tt, and the “You Mat­ter” What­sApp chat for youth aged 15–29

He al­so called for up­dat­ed li­cen­sure and reg­u­la­tion for psy­chol­o­gists to en­sure qual­i­ty care and pa­tient pro­tec­tion.

Per­haps the most pow­er­ful mo­ment of Dr Bo­doe’s speech came when he shared a deeply per­son­al loss: the sui­cide of a 21-year-old med­ical stu­dent, the son of a for­mer pa­tient—a child he him­self had de­liv­ered years ago in his for­mer role as an ob­ste­tri­cian-gy­nae­col­o­gist.

“I knew how hard the par­ents had worked to get him in­to med­ical school,” he said, “and there was this moth­er, in sham­bles, shocked… what do you say to such a per­son?”

His voice broke with emo­tion as he ac­knowl­edged the psy­cho­log­i­cal pain ex­pe­ri­enced by too many fam­i­lies and pledged to do more—ur­gent­ly and com­pas­sion­ate­ly—for men­tal health care in this coun­try.

His min­istry’s fu­ture plans in­clude a Na­tion­al Strate­gic Plan for De­men­tia, a Men­tal Health In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem, and the in­te­gra­tion of men­tal health in­to na­tion­al dis­as­ter re­sponse frame­works.

It cer­tain­ly feels as if men­tal health has fi­nal­ly been giv­en the pri­or­i­ty it de­serves. Bo­doe’s ap­proach is a rare blend of com­pas­sion and clear pol­i­cy di­rec­tion—heart and strat­e­gy work­ing to­geth­er.

But the true mea­sure will be in the fol­low-through. As a na­tion, we owe it to our youth, our fam­i­lies, and our­selves to en­sure these promis­es be­come re­al­i­ty.