Psychiatrist: Vaccinations vital in mental health battle

Achieving herd immunity is an important step in cleaning up the aftermath of the mental health disaster that COVID-19 has caused.

This is the view of Dr. Ermine Belle, who spoke during a webinar hosted by the Barbados Association of Psychiatrists, titled: ‘The Mental Health Storm in the COVID Pandemic’.

“We have to look at things like vaccination. As many persons as are willing must be vaccinated. The more persons are vaccinated, the less persons will be infected. The less persons infected, the less persons anxious; the less persons anxious and stressed, the sooner we will be able to regain our composure, focus, motivate ourselves and others and become more able to create and sustain a new normal existence,” she said.

“We are in a storm and right now we are all in it together and we have to pull our weight.”

Belle also shared a few tips to help people with their mental health during this time.

“Share your feelings. Find someone to share what you’re worrying about – it doesn’t have to be a counsellor or a psychologist, it could be a friend who has a listening ear because you want people who are going to hear you out,” she said.

“Maintain some level of regimes. We had the situation of lockdown and curfew and not being able to work and being at home and becoming couch potatoes, and this is not good; you still needed to maintain some level of routine. We need to enjoy hobbies and create new ones.”

Additionally, she stated that it is also important to ensure maintain your physical health, because an absence of good physical health means the presence of poor mental health.

“We have to look after our physical health, we have to look after our mental health and we have to look after our spiritual health,” she stressed.