CARISA LEE

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Since its launch in Jan­u­ary 2021, men­tal health and psy­cho­log­i­cal sup­port web­site Fine Care TT has at­tract­ed more than 50,000 views.

Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, at the first in-per­son meet­ing of the Men­tal Health and Psy­choso­cial Sup­port Tech­ni­cal Work­ing Group, said the link for sui­cide pre­ven­tion was clicked the most.

“One of the most fre­quent­ly vis­it­ed pages is the sui­cide pre­ven­tion page,” he said.

The Cri­sis Sup­port Di­rec­to­ry ((https://find­carett.com/) has help­ful links for gen­der-based vi­o­lence, ad­dic­tion, so­cial ser­vices, cop­ing ma­te­ri­als, and coun­selling ser­vices.

The min­is­ter said it was not pos­si­ble to have a psy­chol­o­gist in every house­hold but the Mind­wise Project al­lows them ac­cess to over 30 agen­cies, 24/7. But ad­mit­ted that it need­ed more trac­tion.

“About a month ago I was in my con­sis­ten­cy of­fice on a Tues­day, my sec­re­tary comes, MP there is some­body on the phone who want to talk to you she wants to com­mit sui­cide ... They bring the phone I lis­tened to her, I am not a trained psy­chol­o­gist, I’m a man­ag­er and I know the val­ue of Mind­wise. Af­ter I spoke to her, I lit­er­al­ly talked her down from the edge,” he ex­plained.

Deyals­ingh said he gave the woman the Mind­wise in­for­ma­tion and she called an hour lat­er and told him that he saved her life.

Ac­cord­ing to the web­site, Find­carett.com is the di­rec­to­ry of Men­tal Health and Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sup­port (MH­PSS) Ser­vices de­liv­ered by the Tech­ni­cal Work­ing Group of the Men­tal Health and Psy­cho-So­cial Sup­port Net­work of Trinidad and To­ba­go which was ac­ti­vat­ed in 2020 in re­sponse to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The tech­ni­cal work­ing group con­sists of mem­bers from or­gan­i­sa­tions that over­see or are di­rect­ly in­volved in the de­liv­ery of MH­PSS re­lat­ed ser­vices or ac­tiv­i­ties.

These in­clude the min­istries of Health, Ed­u­ca­tion, So­cial De­vel­op­ment, and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment. The Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion and Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties.

Deyals­ingh said this was why he will de­fend the staff of the pub­lic health care against base­less at­tacks be­cause their ef­forts saved at least one per­son that he knew of.

“When we do some­thing wrong, fine crit­i­cise us. When I de­fend you, I know what I am de­fend­ing, I’m de­fend­ing peo­ple with pas­sion, I’m de­fend­ing peo­ple with in­tegri­ty,” he said.

Di­rec­tor of Men­tal Health Dr Hazel Oth­el­lo said they plan to con­tin­ue to pro­vide na­tion­al men­tal health sup­port free of charge and im­prove on key ini­tia­tives.

She added that they will con­tin­ue to ad­vo­cate for ro­bust men­tal health cri­sis re­sponse.

Mean­while, Deyals­ingh al­so shared his view on So­ca Artiste Iw­er George’s use of the Na­tion­al An­them in one of his songs.

“I would al­so like to con­grat­u­late this crowd this morn­ing for treat­ing the Na­tion­al An­them with the re­spect and rev­er­ence it de­serves. I speak no more on that,” he said.