Basseterre, St. Kitts, October 10 2023 (ZIZ Newsroom):On Tuesday St. Kitts and Nevis joined countries across the globe in observing World Mental Health Day observed under the theme, “Mental Health is a Universal Right”.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) mental health is a basic human right for all people and everyone has a right to the highest attainable standard of mental health.
In the Federation, Director of the National Counseling Centre, Michelle De La Coudray-Blake said it’s important to have conversations about maintaining good mental health as mental health issues can affect anyone.
“It crosses all socio-economic barriers,” she said. “It is all encompassing. It crosses all situations, and people never know when their mental health could be challenged because of particular circumstances in life. So it means saying that this is a situation or a circumstance where all of us could at some time be dealing with things that impact our mental health.”
She said maintaining good mental health gives one the stability and resilience to deal with the daily stresses and interactions a person encounters.
“Good mental health allows us to understand how to manage and express feelings and emotions,” she said. “Good mental health allows us to know how to manage relationships, intimate, social, work, professional, just relationships. So good mental health gives us the balance for being able to just sort of manage life.”
Director Blake said good mental health comes from taking care of our biological self, or psychological self and our social self.
“So our biological self means that we have to take care of what happens to our body, what goes into our body, our sleep routines, what we take in, what we eat, what we drink,” she said. “Then the physical part of it, to make sure that we are functioning, that we could think, that we could remember clearly that we could process, then of course there’s the psychological aspect that’s internal, how we think, how we interpret things, how we manage things, how we manage emotions. And the social, we are social beings and we need to have connections to people and groups that sustain us.”
According to the World Health Organization all over the world, people with mental health conditions continue to experience a wide range of human rights violations.
Many are excluded from community life and discriminated against, while many more cannot access the mental health care they need or can only access care that violates their human rights.
]]>Basseterre, St. Kitts, January 7, 2020 (SKNIS): Speaking during the radio and television show ‘Working for You’ on January 6, officials from the Counselling Unit within the Ministry of Social Development, said that despite the challenges posed by family counselling, the Counselling Unit has witnessed successes in how families have benefited from its Family Matters Programme.
The Counselling Unit is piloting the Families Matters Programme (FMP) which is an evidence-based, parent-focused intervention programme funded by the United States Agency for International Development USAID). This programme has been adapted and implemented in countries throughout the world and is designed to promote positive parenting and improve parent-child communication.
Member of the Counselling Unit and Family Counsellor, Alicia Collins, said “Our first year was the most challenging year because it was a new approach. No service provider (Counselling Unit staff) was entering into any home. She explained that this was because families were skeptical of their new methods and did not trust their motives.
The Director of the Counselling Unit, Michele de la Coudray-Blake, said that the training received from the USAID allowed staff members to change their perspectives on these challenges and take steps in the right direction towards achieving their overall goal of reducing risk factors within the family so as to better protect children.
As a result, families were more accepting of the message and welcomed counsellors into their space. The family counsellors interacted with the families, engaging in positive reinforcement of parenting skills.
“Children have seen parents who may not have spoken to each other for years, come together and work while developing a different relationship,” Mrs. Blake stated.
Another success highlighted was that of parents changing their strategy of discipline as “they moved it away from that punitive way to having more conversations that then yield results.”
“We’ve seen young children step up to the plate and be engaged in the household and what’s going on there as well,” she said.
She said that these successes were a direct result of engagement through the Families Matters Programme.
]]>Basseterre, St. Kitts, January 05, 2021 (SKNIS): Officials from the Counselling Unit within the Ministry of Social Development will be featured on the popular government radio and television programme “Working for You” on Wednesday, 06, 2021.
The special guests will be Michele de la Coudray-Blake, Director of the Counselling Unit, and Alicia Collins and Jeremy Thomas, Family Counsellors.
The panel will discuss the Ministry’s Family Matters Programme, which is facilitated in the Counselling Unit. How families are encouraged to be a part of the programme and how the programme differs from other interventions with at-risk youth will form part of the discussion along with other related matters.
Hosted by Lesroy Williams, “Working for You” offers news, views, reviews, interviews and all the happenings of the Team Unity Administration, which has pledged transparency, accountability, good governance and a fair share for all citizens of the Federation.
The programme features government officials, heads of government departments, permanent secretaries and other government officials who will provide you with timely, relevant and accurate information as it relates to the social, economic, human, political and sustainable development of St. Kitts and Nevis.
“Working for You” is carried live every Wednesday on ZIZ, WinnFM and Sugar City Rock from 1:30-3:00 pm and rebroadcast on Freedom FM and Von Radio on Thursdays from 7:30-9:00 am and 10:30-12:00 pm respectively, and CBN-Radio on Sundays from 5:00-6:30 pm. The programme is also streamed live on the SKNIS Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/sknismedia/
]]>Basseterre, St. Kitts, October 07, 2020 (SKNIS): According to Dr. Cherrilyn Warde-Crawford, Clinical Psychologist within the Ministry of Health, this year’s theme for World Mental Health Day is extremely important and timely given the toll Covid-19 has had on lives and livelihoods.
The theme for World Mental Health Day is Mental Health for All: Greater Investment—Greater Access; Everyone, Everywhere.
“So, it is mental health for all, greater investment, greater access,” said Dr. Warde-Crawford. “This is so timely because it is saying greater investment, greater access and we want persons to invest in mental health so that everybody could be able to access these services.”
Dr. Warde-Crawford noted that the inclusion of everyone and their investments will prove quite beneficial. She said that the world budget for mental health is inadequate, noting that information from the World Health Organization (WHO) indicated that three percent of the health budget is allocated for mental health in low-income countries, while higher-income countries stand at five percent.
“We would see how that could cause what the World Health Organization refers to as a treatment gap because it means that certain services are not being invested in so that they can be functioning at their highest potential so that persons can readily access and feel comfortable to access these services,” she said.
Michele de la Coudray-Blake, Director of the Counselling Unit in the Department of Community Development, Gender Affairs and Social Services, shared similar sentiments and explained the reason behind joining the rest of the world to bring attention to mental health.
“Essentially, we think we need to focus each year on some aspects of mental health and bring that to the forefront, engage people in discussions, educate people and let them have a little bit more awareness and sensitivity so that at the end of the day knowledge, awareness and advocacy could grow,” said Mrs. Coudray- Blake.
She said that Mental Health Day allows officials to move mental health from the shadows and bring it to the forefront.
Based on information from the WHO’s website, World Mental Health Day is observed on October 10 every year, with the overall objective of raising awareness of mental health issues around the world and mobilizing efforts in support of mental health. The Day provides an opportunity for all stakeholders working on mental health issues to talk about their work, and what more needs to be done to make mental health care a reality for people worldwide
]]>Basseterre, St. Kitts, October 5th , 2020 (ZIZ News):
By: Chaïra Flanders
Mental Health Awareness will be the topic of discussion on the Wednesday October 7 edition of Working for You on ZIZ radio.
Representatives from the Department of Social Services and St. Kitts Mental Health Association will be present to discuss the topic, “Mental Health for All- Greater Investment- Greater Access- Everyone- Everywhere”.
The special guests are Clinical Psychologist, Dr. Cherrilyn Warde Crawford and Director of Counselling in the Ministry of Social Development, Michele de la Coudray Blake.
“Working for You” is carried live every Wednesday on ZIZ, WinnFM and Sugar City Rock from 1:30-3:00 pm.
The programme is also streamed live on the SKNIS Facebook page.
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