The past two in­stal­ments came from my col­lec­tion of men­tal health re­flex­es and re­spons­es, lit­tered with dis­ap­point­ments. The an­guish comes more from the ig­no­rance of oth­ers, though, as my in­ter­nal val­i­da­tion is sound and un­shake­able.

In­side of the net­tle, I am grate­ful for a sound mind, reg­u­lat­ed emo­tions, and for the pro­fes­sion­al in­ter­ven­tions that are avail­able, if one is need­ed and, bet­ter still, if one can af­ford it pri­vate­ly.

Hurt and ex­clu­sion are a re­al part of the jour­ney and for that rea­son, in a coun­try or any ju­ris­dic­tion sim­i­lar to our en­vi­ron­ment, I cau­tion peo­ple to think care­ful­ly about the jour­ney of us­ing their lived ex­pe­ri­ence to “el­e­vate the con­ver­sa­tion.”

In the very re­cent past, I had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve on a UN-fund­ed work­ing com­mit­tee that al­lowed me to speak to some of what I think we need to change in law and Con­sti­tu­tion to have a bet­ter liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence here for peo­ple liv­ing in­ca­pac­i­tat­ed or lim­it­ed by dis­abil­i­ties.

Some of those mea­sures, if they ever go be­yond “work­ing group” sta­tus, may work to both nor­malise men­tal ill­ness­es as a rou­tine part of our pop­u­la­tion health, in the way we view and sup­port phys­i­cal ill­ness­es, and/or may pro­vide a canopy for those man­ag­ing dis­or­ders.

If we were to live in a space where more state ac­tions and mes­sag­ing sig­nalled sup­port for men­tal ill­ness and men­tal health, it could work to lim­it stig­ma and nor­malise the ex­pe­ri­ence of at least one quar­ter of our pop­u­la­tion—I use the one-in-four glob­al preva­lence of men­tal dis­or­ders.

For ex­am­ple, think of what would hap­pen if we were able to en­act a com­pul­so­ry em­ploy­ment quo­ta for every em­ploy­er, start­ing first with the State, which de­mands that work pop­u­la­tion must ex­plic­it­ly make place for those liv­ing with di­ag­nosed men­tal dis­or­ders.

And as I wrote that, I im­me­di­ate­ly re­called that while prepar­ing for the first in­stal­ment in 2012, we wit­nessed the in­car­cer­a­tion of Cheryl Miller, a pub­lic ser­vant who “act­ed strange­ly” and was in­vol­un­tar­i­ly re­moved from her work­space.

The archives will show that my en­try in­to this space was ac­com­pa­nied by a pic­ture of Miss Miller. Do your re­search if this case is un­fa­mil­iar and read the court/case doc­u­ments that are avail­able on­line as well.

What if the gov­ern­ment, her em­ploy­er then, be­ing found to have vi­o­lat­ed Miller’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, had seized the op­por­tu­ni­ty to im­prove work­place well-be­ing? Do you know how pro­gres­sive our lit­tle “1.5 mil­lion” would have been 14 years lat­er?

We could have cre­at­ed rules and es­tab­lished laws and pro­vi­sions that would give lived ex­pe­ri­ence peo­ple a sense of se­cu­ri­ty, or at least place bound­aries that could have pro­mot­ed bet­ter ed­u­ca­tion and more in­clu­sion in the work en­vi­ron­ment.

Rather, there is a “qui­et” his­to­ry in T&T of peo­ple be­ing forced out of em­ploy­ment be­cause they are man­ag­ing a men­tal dis­or­der.

It may sur­prise you that even in agen­cies set up to pro­tect peo­ple’s equal­i­ty, rights and dig­ni­ty, in ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions, in health­care, in both pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors, vi­o­la­tions oc­cur against peo­ple with lived men­tal health ex­pe­ri­ence, di­ag­nosed or sus­pect­ed (by deemed quirk­i­ness, or strange­ness).

We are both a suf­fi­cient­ly rich and in­tel­li­gent coun­try/pop­u­la­tion to not re­main so back­ward. But as we fum­ble in dis­ci­pline and pro­duc­tion, so it goes for tol­er­ance too. Every gov­ern­ment in my life­time—and be­fore, re­al­ly—has failed to ad­dress the al­most 25 per cent of our pop­u­la­tion that needs men­tal dis­abil­i­ty cov­er­age.

I al­ways ref­er­ence Japan, which in­cludes an over­all statu­to­ry dis­abil­i­ty em­ploy­ment quo­ta for peo­ple with men­tal dis­abil­i­ties.

To act as a mod­el for so­ci­ety, cen­tral and lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies are legal­ly re­quired to main­tain a dis­abil­i­ty em­ploy­ment rate of about 2.5 per cent or high­er. In Ju­ly 2026, pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies’ quo­ta moved to 2.7 per cent.

Japan’s Min­istry of Health’s na­tion­al guide­lines were cre­at­ed in 2005 to curb dis­crim­i­na­tion against and em­ploy­ment bar­ri­ers for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties.

In T&T, we un­der­stand spe­cial sub­si­dies and con­ces­sions very well, but we are very spe­cif­ic about where they are em­ployed.

One ex­am­ple I used in our dis­cus­sions is the spe­cial con­ces­sion for hous­ing for the pro­tec­tive ser­vices in al­lo­ca­tion of homes through a ded­i­cat­ed ten per cent quo­ta.

We do that be­cause they are con­sid­ered an im­por­tant and es­sen­tial part of our so­ci­ety and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus.

Well, is there a place to con­sid­er those who live, work and con­tribute de­spite man­ag­ing men­tal ill­ness­es may al­so need a quo­ta or spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tions for hous­ing?

Giv­en the pe­cu­liar­i­ties of their em­ploy­ment cir­cum­stances or earn­ing abil­i­ty, they may be pre­clud­ed from af­ford­ing or qual­i­fy­ing for open mar­ket hous­ing. Would a T&T gov­ern­ment con­sid­er de­sign­ing a hous­ing sup­port sys­tem as an es­sen­tial pop­u­la­tion/na­tion­al ser­vice?

Of course, we know many cat­e­gories of peo­ple may al­so think they have a lob­by too, but I am not here to dis­til this in­to a pol­i­cy, on­ly to sug­gest that we can do bet­ter.

World Men­tal Health Day, last Sat­ur­day (Oc­to­ber 10) was com­mem­o­rat­ed un­der the theme “Lived ex­pe­ri­ences heard: re­al voic­es, re­al change.” My ruf­fles orig­i­nat­ed there.