Healing Together Strengthens Mental Health Access in the Grenadines

By R.Butcher. Updated 11:09 a.m., Thursday, October 23, 2025, Atlantic Standard Time (GMT-4).

Healing Together is bringing mental health care directly to communities across the Grenadines, linking therapy with culture, creativity, and environmental stewardship to strengthen resilience. Supported by the Government of Canada through the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives (CFLI), the initiative is decentralising access to care and empowering local leaders as co-facilitators.

Since the second phase of the project’s launch in September, 37 participants have taken part in Psychological First Aid (PFA) workshops and nature-based wellness gatherings across Union Island and Mayreau. These sessions teach how to recognise and respond to individuals in distress, practice active listening and compassionate communication, connect with practical and social support, and develop effective self-care and peer support skills that ripple beyond the training space into homes, classrooms, churches, and community circles. Care becomes not just an individual act but a shared practice. By making psychosocial education communal, the programme is helping participants to redefine well-being as a social condition rooted in empathy and mutual accountability.

On each island, local ambassadors assist with logistics and facilitation, while small businesses, community groups, schools, NGOs, and elders contribute venues, food, expertise, and time. Each visit becomes a collaborative act across age, gender, and vocation — an evolving ecosystem of care.

The programme’s hybrid approach reconnects the emotional, spiritual, and ecological dimensions of healing, challenging colonial legacies that once separated body and mind from spirit and land. By bringing therapists and facilitators directly to the Grenadines, the project ensures services reach those who previously had limited access.

Although significant progress has been made, national mental health infrastructure remains largely centralised. Most services are still provided on mainland St Vincent through the Mental Health Rehabilitation Centre (MHRC) and several polyclinics, with Grenadine residents receiving only quarterly access to clinical care.

Healing Together aims to address these inequities by localising mental health support. Rather than importing rigid models, the programme collaborates with community knowledge holders, first responders, faith leaders, teachers, nurses, and creative practitioners who carry generational wisdom in adaptation and recovery.

From now through February 2026, the Healing Together editorial column, titled “Reflections on Recovery and Adaptation,” will release stories and analyses exploring the role of mental health in national development and in creating an enabling environment for a more compassionate and resilient country.

Readers will hear from psychologists, social workers, counsellors, and leaders within the Ministry of Health, Wellness and the Environment, as they offer insight into advocacy, systems of care, community activism, and the importance of reducing stigmatisation and discrimination.

Healing Together remains proud to contribute its voice, resources, and partnerships to the national effort to strengthen mental health across St Vincent and the Grenadines.

This information was provided by The Hub Collective.