A men­tal health cri­sis is ad­verse­ly im­pact­ing T&T. In this sec­ond-Part of a two-Part se­ries on the Samar­i­tan Move­ment (SM) in TT, I fo­cus on three of SM’s projects in T&T.

SM was found­ed in T&T in 2022 by Catholic Arch­bish­op Charles Ja­son Gor­don and Fa­ther Jer­ry Mc­Glone, SJ of George­town Uni­ver­si­ty. SM op­er­ates un­der the Catholic Com­mis­sion for So­cial Jus­tice (CC­SJ), draw­ing its in­spi­ra­tion from the Gospel para­ble of the Good Samar­i­tan (Luke 10:25–37).

Since sys­temic so­ci­etal change re­quires co­or­di­nat­ed ac­tion across all lev­els of so­ci­ety, SM op­er­ates as a coali­tion of care­givers, men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als, and faith-based groups and fo­cus­es on pre­ven­tion, ear­ly in­ter­ven­tion, and pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion. Its aim is to build re­silient chil­dren, fam­i­lies, and com­mu­ni­ties by ad­dress­ing the es­ca­lat­ing men­tal health and trau­ma cri­sis among youth.

Last Sat­ur­day, June 6, SM launched a com­mu­ni­ty-based new Caribbean Men­tal Health and Sui­cide First Aid Train­ing Pro­gramme at As­sump­tion Parish (North­ern Vic­ari­ate). This is a 4.0-hour work­shop (split in­to two seg­ments).

The sec­ond seg­ment takes place to­day, June 13. The work­shops are the re­sult of a ground­break­ing ef­fort to adapt an ev­i­denced-based WHO pro­gramme with­in the Caribbean con­text. Lo­cal ex­perts and lo­cal voic­es were high­light­ed to cre­ate a first and ground­break­ing ini­tia­tive.

This is the be­gin­ning of an Arch­dioce­san Roll­out of Cul­tur­al­ly Adapt­ed Men­tal Health and Sui­cide First Aid Pro­gramme. It aims to equip teach­ers, priests, and pas­toral work­ers in the Arch­dio­cese’s 66 parish­es with es­sen­tial skills to recog­nise ear­ly warn­ing signs of men­tal health chal­lenges, trau­ma, sui­ci­dal­i­ty and self-harm.

The project is de­signed “to cre­ate an ex­pan­sive, na­tion­wide net­work of men­tal health first-re­spon­ders.” Once learn­ers learn how to iden­ti­fy some­one with sui­ci­dal thoughts, they can pass that per­son on to a qual­i­fied men­tal health pro­fes­sion­al or a med­ical doc­tor. “This can and will hope­ful­ly save lives.”

As not­ed at the launch, “the ur­gency of the pro­gramme is un­der­scored by the trag­ic re­al­i­ties fac­ing lo­cal min­is­ters and first re­spon­ders, who are wit­ness­ing an un­prece­dent­ed spike in self-harm across every sin­gle age brack­et.”

Dea­con Derek Wal­cott stat­ed at the launch that he had just “done about sev­en sui­cide fu­ner­als, from a 12-year-old, all the way up to 60-year-old peo­ple… it is an epi­dem­ic…”.

An­oth­er key SM project is the Hori­zons Project, which has launched its sec­ond phase. This is a men­tal well­ness and em­pow­er­ment ini­tia­tive that grew out of dis­cus­sions with diplo­mats and com­mu­ni­ty part­ners on how best to sup­port vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren in our schools and those liv­ing in res­i­den­tial care. It fo­cus­es on com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment, em­pow­er­ment, trau­ma-in­formed en­gage­ment and cul­tur­al ex­change, with ac­tiv­i­ties de­signed to give chil­dren a voice, and to dis­cov­er pos­si­bil­i­ties that ex­ist be­yond their own small worlds, broad­en their “hori­zons”, while ex­pos­ing diplo­mats to T&T cul­ture.

The project is aimed at “con­nect­ing mem­bers of the diplo­mat­ic com­mu­ni­ty with vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren in T&T’s schools and res­i­den­tial homes. The ini­tia­tive was launched at St Do­minic’s Home, where or­gan­is­ers say the goal is not on­ly to sup­port chil­dren in care, but al­so to cre­ate mean­ing­ful con­nec­tions be­tween young res­i­dents and mem­bers of the diplo­mat­ic corps.” Youths have op­por­tu­ni­ties to speak in safe spaces, while adults lis­ten to them, and to their needs.

The fol­low­ing High Com­mis­sions/Em­bassies are al­ready in­volved in the Project: Cana­da, Venezuela, Pana­ma, and Mex­i­co. Al­so com­mit­ted are the High Com­mis­sions/Em­bassies of Spain, Ger­many, Ko­rea, and Chile, as well as the Del­e­ga­tion of the Eu­ro­pean Union to T&T, the Vat­i­can, and the Apos­tolic Nun­cio to T&T. Diplo­mats can demon­strate em­pa­thy, share their ex­pe­ri­ences, build bridges and act as men­tors to youths. “This em­bod­ies the re­search that one adult, one men­tor, one teacher can change a child’s life for­ev­er.”

On March 16, SM, in part­ner­ship with the Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion Board of Man­age­ment (CEBM), host­ed a lead­er­ship ses­sion. The ses­sion in­vit­ed prin­ci­pals from eight SM pi­lot schools al­ready en­gaged in trau­ma-in­formed train­ing, along with eight qual­i­ty as­sur­ance man­agers from CEBM.

“It first high­light­ed that schools and teach­ers are al­ready do­ing sub­stan­tial work to sup­port stu­dents, of­ten un­der enor­mous pres­sure and stress… By link­ing qual­i­ty as­sur­ance sys­tems with a re­search and da­ta-dri­ven im­ple­men­ta­tion ap­proach, the ini­tia­tive moves be­yond iso­lat­ed ef­forts to­ward a more co­or­di­nat­ed, sys­tems-lev­el mod­el. The train­ing fo­cused on cre­at­ing more trau­ma-re­silient schools…

“Im­prove­ment de­pends on an align­ment across lead­er­ship, school cul­ture, poli­cies, and every­day prac­tices.” (Catholic News). “It is hoped that all schools with­in T&T be­come com­pas­sion­ate­ly re­silient in this way.”