As countries around the world battle with the mental health fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, Guyana, according to Director of the Ministry of Public Health’s Mental Health Unit Dr Util Richmond-Thomas, has been able to grapple with this issue because there is a large ground force of trained personnel in primary care who know what to do with persons presenting mental health issues.
“… Hence there does not seem to be a dramatic upsurge in mental health cases,” Dr Richmond-Thomas told Stabroek Weekend in a recent interview.
She admitted that there has not been a large increase in calls to her unit, because the majority of calls about the pandemic go first to the well-advertised COVID-19 hotline. “Before the pandemic began, the Mental Health Unit was already engaged in training more than 400 doctors and nurses to screen for and manage the most common mental health issue,” Dr Richmond-Thomas revealed.
