Mental Health Week opens at Rockview

This week is being observed as Mental Health Week. The event will be marked by a number of activities to help raise awareness about the issue and promote mental health under the theme “Mental and Physical Health Across the Life Span.” This morning, the forty-nine patients at Rockview Hospital were among the guests invited to the official ceremony.

Jennifer Lovell, Pres., Mental Health Association
“Mental Health Week started, I forget how many years ago, but the whole idea is to bring people’s awareness to the issues of the mentally ill and to promote and advocate for mental wellness. Too often when people in Belize talk about mental health they mean mental illness and there is a big difference.”

“We are not focussing on the needs of the community when we have just one place to treat chronic mental illness. People from Punta Gorda, people from Corozal have to come here if their people are chronically ill. And now the new centre they are building in Belmopan again limits the people from the villages or from these far away districts from getting their people treated in their communities. People get well in their communities; they get well at home, correct? So that is one of our concerns. The other concern is knowing how important the first years of our lives are. We don?t have a child psychologist and I mean this has been going on for years and years. Things are getting better, we have two psychiatrists, but we have to keep up the rhetoric to continue to gently remind the Ministry of Health that we need to take care of the needs of children.”

The Ministry of Health is emphasising the importance of the relationship between mental and physical health and the need to maintain mental health throughout our lifetimes.