Since 2008, the US has recog­nised Ju­ly as Mi­nor­i­ty Men­tal Health Month, an ob­ser­vance which high­lights the unique men­tal health strug­gles of Black, in­dige­nous, and peo­ple of colour (BIPOC). Ju­ly is al­so re­ferred to as BIPOC Men­tal Health Month.

Men­tal Health Amer­i­ca says that this month, which aims to bring aware­ness to the strug­gles of the un­der­rep­re­sent­ed, is al­so known as the Bebe Moore Camp­bell Na­tion­al Mi­nor­i­ty Men­tal Health Aware­ness Month. Camp­bell was a par­ent ad­vo­cate for her daugh­ter and a renowned Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist, teacher and au­thor, whose ad­vo­ca­cy for her men­tal­ly ill child and work in a Black com­mu­ni­ty over­flowed as a na­tion­al em­bod­i­ment of Black and un­der­rep­re­sent­ed com­mu­ni­ties (https://mha­na­tion­al.org/bipoc-men­tal-health/bebe-moore-camp­bell/).

The US Con­gress for­mal­ly ho­n­oured her work in 2008, with a na­tion­al fo­cus on the well-be­ing of BIPOC, ac­knowl­edg­ing the dis­tinc­tive is­sues.

Ex­plor­ing BIPOC men­tal health while tread­ing through racist chat­ter height­ened fol­low­ing last April’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion vic­to­ries, de­feats, fall­outs and fail­ures, is be­wil­der­ing. While there are in­ter­na­tion­al ex­am­ples of so­ci­eties pro­gress­ing to­wards ame­lio­ra­tion of the hurt and in­jury from is­sues of race and iden­ti­ty, we seem to be clue­less (or with­out care) about the dam­age caused and con­tin­ue to use each oth­er’s race and iden­ti­ty as a foot­cloth, trad­ing in­sults to “out-ug­ly” one an­oth­er.

Liv­ing with the bless­ing of cel­e­brat­ing both ob­ser­vances of In­di­an Ar­rival Day and African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day, this con­tin­u­ous ill speak has my mind wedged in the con­tem­pla­tion of the deep com­plex­i­ties of race, men­tal health, and iden­ti­ty and how un­pro­gres­sive we are in ad­dress­ing our unique cir­cum­stances.

That in­ter­twin­ing of race and iden­ti­ty here has not yet served us in a man­ner that is up­lift­ing, healthy and pro­gres­sive. Rather, it is the un­der­cur­rent that po­laris­es our ex­is­tence, of­ten with us ig­nor­ing (or not know­ing) how de­bil­i­tat­ing it is on the psy­che of the na­tion. And re­peat­ed­ly, these are weaponised by politi­cians for sup­port and ad­van­tage, cam­paign af­ter cam­paign.

Be­hind the boast of “rain­bow” and the mul­ti­cul­tur­al beau­ty that we cel­e­brate in T&T, and de­spite the pock­ets of vi­bran­cy we find in the mon­tage of his­to­ry and cul­ture, we are a deeply scarred peo­ple.

This is my as­sess­ment. It comes from the ex­treme dis­com­fort I find, es­pe­cial­ly in our con­tin­ued in­ter­ac­tions, and par­tic­u­lar­ly, if one is suf­fi­cient­ly brave (or un­wise) to read the com­ments be­low head­line sto­ries. And these do not nec­es­sar­i­ly have to be po­lit­i­cal top­ics. My soul is fa­tigued with the ug­ly.

I iden­ti­fy as Afro-Trinida­di­an. I ful­ly em­brace my African­ness with­out dis­com­fort. And I ex­pert­ly sus­pend judge­ment on the choic­es of oth­ers. In fact, I can­not tell you if any­one else among my clos­est rel­a­tives iden­ti­fies as African or Afro-Trinida­di­an. And that is per­fect­ly fine.

The pock­ets of vile­ness about iden­ti­fy­ing as and cel­e­brat­ing African her­itage re­al­ly un­nerves me. This year, like those be­fore, the im­pact (ex­ter­nal and in­ter­nal) of the neg­a­tiv­i­ty and its ef­fect on the men­tal health and well-be­ing of us as a peo­ple and a na­tion is on my mind.

The pri­vate dis­course I hold with my­self is al­ways about how we will over­come the cen­turies of colo­nial trau­ma, racial hi­er­ar­chies, and in­ter­nalised op­pres­sion that con­tin­ue to shape how we view our­selves and each oth­er. I con­sid­er how we can heal and be­come a com­mu­ni­ty with bet­ter well-be­ing.

All Caribbean iden­ti­ties need heal­ing. There is no de­bate about that. But that heal­ing can­not on­ly be about his­tor­i­cal iden­ti­ty, cul­tur­al and an­ces­tral pride but must be fo­cused on our psy­cho­log­i­cal sur­vival; be­com­ing re­silient, find­ing mean­ing, hope, thriv­ing in ad­ver­si­ty, build­ing com­mu­ni­ty, and more!

There is pre­cious lit­tle that I find pos­i­tive in our lega­cies of en­slave­ment, in­den­ture­ship, and colo­nial­ism. Sec­ondary school his­to­ry of my time was pre­sent­ed as sani­tised eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal ma­noeu­vrings of the colonis­ers, and al­most as if they did us a favour by “dis­cov­er­ing us.” But suf­fi­cient cu­rios­i­ty quick­ly blew that cov­er.

The “grow­ing up” years of read­ing deep­er and in­ter­ro­gat­ing is­sues taught me that these psy­cho­log­i­cal regimes were bent to the de­val­u­a­tion of minds and bod­ies, and de­struc­tion of iden­ti­ties of en­tire pop­u­la­tions, cul­tures, con­ti­nents even, and coun­tries.

As well, as else­where in the colonised world, we con­tin­ue to ex­pe­ri­ence iden­ti­ty con­fu­sion, un­cer­tain if we should em­brace our her­itage or as­sim­i­late in­to a more “glo­cal” stan­dard.

Here, we have been told that “there can be no Moth­er In­dia, Moth­er Africa, Moth­er Chi­na, or Moth­er Syr­ia, but on­ly Moth­er Trinidad and To­ba­go,” but many do not feel root­ed in that and the di­vide lives on.

Some even see the idea of “Moth­er T&T” as in­fe­ri­or. And just as the colonis­ers de­vised, each race holds bit­ter­ness against an­oth­er, very of­ten with Afro-Trinida­di­ans con­stant­ly por­trayed by oth­ers as eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­ad­van­taged and liv­ing on hand­outs. The ef­fect of that bru­tal hos­til­i­ty is in the un­der­bel­ly of so many tremors here.

This con­tin­u­ous grap­pling with iden­ti­ty and race erodes our sense of worth and be­long­ing and con­tin­ues to pro­duce neg­a­tive im­pacts on our well-be­ing. These is­sues are al­so known to be as­so­ci­at­ed with the preva­lence of anx­i­ety, de­pres­sion, im­poster syn­drome, low self-es­teem and more.

We need to be­gin to ad­dress men­tal health and well-be­ing from the po­si­tion of our unique cir­cum­stances.