Abstract
This paper examines discussions among physicians, psychologists, public health officials, religious leaders and others who participated in the Caribbean Conferences on Mental Health between 1957 and 1969. Their discussions demonstrate major changes in the understanding of causes, definitions and appropriate treatments of mental health conditions, compared to the late nineteenth century, which saw a wave of major reforms to the management of mental illness in public asylums. Although major shifts in professional understandings of mental health were evident in the mid-twentieth century, the Caribbean Conferences on Mental Health reveal that the problems hindering the implementation of these new approaches were largely similar to those that Guyana and other Caribbean countries continue to face today.
Highlights
The same conference concluded with a series of recommendations to governments designed to provide holistic medical and social care to mental health patients by establishing psychiatric units within general hospitals, as opposed to expanding psychiatric hospitals, and by developing new outpatient and community-run services (CCMH 1965c, 8)
Major efforts to understand and address mental health issues have been ongoing across CARICOM countries since 2010 and formed an important part of the National Health Strategy launched in Guyana in 2015
This paper examines discussions among physicians, psychologists, public health officials, religious leaders and others who participated in the Caribbean Conferences on Mental Health between 1957 and 1969
Summary
The same conference concluded with a series of recommendations to governments designed to provide holistic medical and social care to mental health patients by establishing psychiatric units within general hospitals, as opposed to expanding psychiatric hospitals, and by developing new outpatient and community-run services (CCMH 1965c, 8). Beaubrun of the University of the West Indies (Mona) presented a paper outlining improved recovery and reintegration into society of patients who had been treated with a short programme of medical and therapeutic interventions, in a small psychiatric unit within the Mona General Hospital, before being released to outpatient care.
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