Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: No one to offend you. So I must check my bias. Whatever you go through I must check my bias.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Let love and empathy be the same for you and me. Break down walls mental health for all.
[00:00:15] Speaker C: Check my bias. Check my bias. Check my bias. Check my bias.
[00:00:23] Speaker D: Let's check our biases. Okay. This segment, check my bias, is brought to you with the compliments of the Barbado psychiatric hospital. And in studio with me is Ryan Lewis. Good morning, Ryan.
[00:00:36] Speaker E: Hey, good morning, Carol. And good morning, listeners.
[00:00:38] Speaker D: It's good to have you today. Now, this is interesting. So we've been hearing the tips coming across. I didn't realize it was a campaign that's being launched. So talk to me a little bit about this campaign.
[00:00:52] Speaker E: Well, the check my bias campaign is led by the psychiatric hospital. And I must say kudos to the psychiatry hospital in being the front runners on this campaign in a very timely and relevant concept.
Mental health stigma is something that has been pervasive for a very, very long time. And what this does is actually inhibits persons from seeking help, seeking support and getting the help they need with any mental health challenges that they may be facing. And the idea is that mental health is all of us. Mental health is nothing peculiar to any particular set of persons. So the check my bias campaign is more or less employs a personal responsibility to self reflect and to check our own thoughts and our own biases. And throughout this campaign, we really want to ask this one question and seek the answers for this question. Is my perspective the whole story, or do I need to check my bias? A lot of the times we have initial thoughts about things, concerns about situations, and even persons especially.
And sometimes those initial thoughts are not the total whole as to what the situation is. So we've read books, we have seen persons, and we've even watched movies. And just by looking at the subtitles, we make our own initial judgments and assumptions. But sometimes when you do explore that person, you do interact and you realize, well, hey, this is not what I initially thought. There's a lot more to this situation than what I initially thought. So it provides then, an opportunity for persons to now become more aware, more understanding, more informed. And of course, then you can change the way how you treat persons, how you treat yourself, and how you represent mental health on the whole.
[00:02:48] Speaker D: Wow. So how is this actually going to be walked out? Particular activities or. It's like the tips that we have or other things, so that the public becomes more aware of what it is that you're trying to do, but also helps us to literally check our bias.
[00:03:07] Speaker E: Well, it's going to be quite multifaceted. We started with opening the mind and body gym at the hospital and to check my bias actually has to. We have to look at the bias or the perceptions that the Barbados psychiatry hospital has been perceived by the public. A lot of persons think that it's a one way street and you only come at your most deteriorated end. And we want persons to understand that mental health care is just like any other type of health care. And actually mental health is health. We like to speak about it in silos, about having dented health, about having environmental health. But health is health actually the power holy World Health Organization, they actually had defined eight dimensions of health. Spiritual, financial, environmental, emotional, physical, etcetera. So we need to speak about health in its generality as opposed to speaking about it as the intersection. And if you look at it as an intercession, then you still have to appreciate its overlaps. How do you feel when you have money versus when you don't have money? How do you feel when your surroundings are clean versus when your surroundings are not clean? It all affects us, affects our psyche. We all experienced Covid as well. And Covid was not just a physical illness. Oh, no, right. Covid caused the shutdown. Covid caused persons to lose it jobs. Covid caused our borders to be closed at some point in time. So it affected more than just healthcare. It affected how our operations as a society, as a country, and as a world as well. So it affected all echelon as a society.
It affected all dimensions of society. But that had an overarching bearing on our psyche because we had to use whatever coping mechanisms to adjust to the times to figure out if, how are we going to assert continuity in our lives. Some businesses flop and some businesses emerge. So we have to look at how do we plan our lives, how do we go about. Because Covid was one pandemic level crisis, but there are other pandemic level crises that we face each day. And that's something going to sit at eleven exam yesterday. Sometimes persons are faced with anxiety. They may know the subject matter, but there is some things may have a little challenge going and handling that anxiety that's associated with sitting the exam.
[00:05:34] Speaker D: Yeah. And especially when you move them out of the environment that they're accustomed to and put them in somewhere else, that adds additional stress. And I think when you talk about mental health, mental wellness, you have to look at all of those situations and.
[00:05:50] Speaker E: All the constructs that actually define our determinants of health. So it's not just about the absence of illness. It's about actually handling everyday stress. So when we speak about mental health we realize that it's about those life experiences that we navigate every day from getting up in the morning, getting ourselves ready, getting the children ready, paying our bills, having food on the table. These things affect us because the ability to provide and to be in control of these things versus not being able to be in control of these things determines how the rest of our day progresses because it affects us.
[00:06:26] Speaker D: Wow. Okay, we've got Ryan Lewis in studio with me and it's all about a campaign. Check my bias campaign. The psychiatric hospital looking at mental health and the way we think about our own mental health, but also others and what the challenges that they could be going through. What makes a person do what they're doing and how do we manage? Suppose it's at work and you realize this colleague is not themselves and that's quote unquote, you know, how do we manage that? Would, would we have to look at those situations as well? Helping other people through?
[00:07:01] Speaker E: Definitely. So the anti stigma campaign is one of many other campaigns that are supposed to come on stream. And one that you're referring to is workplace mental health wellness. And we are looking at getting persons prepared. So just that you have BLS, which is basic life support addressing physical emergencies and acute illnesses. We also have started and piloted a PFA program which is psychological first aid in helping persons to deal with any kind of acute mental health crises. So we started internally within our psychiatric hospital. We've also addressed persons at the national insurance scheme. We are going to the Ministry of Labor and we're going to soon extend it to also to the public. This is also being facilitated by the Barbados Red Cross Society. And what you will learn is the three main elements about looking, listening and linking persons. And it's something that the average citizen can assert and employ in their everyday life because all these techniques are not professional base. These are everyday what you can do. Because sometimes what we see consequentially is just an outcome to what is beneath the surface. And a lot of persons have a lot of unhealed trauma that they are carrying along with them, even persons that are high in society. So each person that we interact with, you're not only carrying our accolades or our smells to them, sometimes we are carrying our baggages to them. So we all need to heal. We all need to kind of introspect, look within and see where those deficits reside and look to build up those things and actually look and see how we can help others too. Because gone are the days where a community actually raised each other. Right now we are looking to more stratified and go on our own just to say that we have been successful. But for me, the true understanding of success is helping one another. And of course it is the endeavor of the psychiatry hospital to ensure that we maintain connectivity and connectedness with families, communities and Barbados society.
[00:09:15] Speaker D: All right, so we're going to take a break and come back with more. Ryan Lewis is with me from the psychiatric hospital as we look at the check my bias campaign.
[00:09:26] Speaker A: No one to offend you, so I must check my bias. Whatever you go through I must check my bias.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: Let love and empathy be the same for you and me. Breakdown was mental health for all.
[00:09:40] Speaker C: Check my bias. Check my bias. Check my bias. Check my bias.
[00:09:48] Speaker D: Check my bias. And in studio with me, Ryan Lewis. He's going to give us a couple more details before we wrap up a really powerful campaign that's been launched.
[00:09:58] Speaker E: Thank you for that, Carol. And like I said, it's very timely and relevant. And is it all of society effort that we really want persons to get on board? Businesses, schools, the religious society. Because we need to repair what we know wants with. And we can only do that if we do it together. And doing it together, we actually have to have understanding. So once we have understanding, this can lead to empathy, because then we can take a collective pause before we spew the next set of words to the person in front of us or the person on the other lane. And we can be more empathetic in how we understand their situation, or at least take a few more moments to try to understand where that person is coming from.
Mental health. Lastly, I just want to speak about that. It's not personal weakness. It's not character flaw.
In my 23 years of experience at the hospital, I've seen person all walks of life from all, all echelons of society. But what was common among them is that all of them had a burning story deep within that they wanted to share a story, that they wanted to be understood and that they needed help and they wanted someone to care for them. So as we go on, we want to understand that mental health exists on the continuum. So some days are going to be good, some days are going to be bad. And it's just like physical illness. Just that you have a flu season sometimes you may have had lost in the past, and when that anniversary comes around, you're going to notice a change in your mood. You're going to notice a change in how you do things. So when you know that that period comes, there are things that you can get ahead of the curve, where you can ensure that your mental wellness remains optimum as much as possible, and that sometimes, too, sometimes hospitalization is necessary. But it's not our first step when we are dealing with persons accessing services, nor is medication. There's a whole range of services that are offered by the psychiatry hospital, including social services, drug rehabilitation services, recreational therapy services, occupational therapy services. So medication is not the only route that goes on, because this is this perception that once you get a medication, you turn into a zombie and it's an apocalypse. That's far from the truth. So I want persons to engage us. Follow us on Instagram across all social media platforms. Ichihospital, and that is Psychhi Hospital, ichihospital on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or no apps, and just follow us. See our messages, our daily messages. We're gonna be having seminars, health fairs. We're gonna have a whole stream of things that are going to really make more awareness towards this check my bias campaign.
[00:12:49] Speaker D: All right, Ryan Lewis, thank you so much. Look forward to hearing more. I hope you'll be back as the campaign really gets rolled out and gets on the way so that we can get on board. Thank you so much. Have a great day.
[00:12:59] Speaker E: Thank you for having me. I enjoy your day as well.
[00:13:03] Speaker F: Did you know that stigma surrounding mental health can have harmful effects on individuals? Check your bias and challenge stereotypes to create a more understanding and inclusive Barbados. A message from the Barbados psychiatry hospital, the Ministry of Health and Wellness Barbados, and the Barbados Government Information Service.
