Barbados' 131-Year-Old Psychiatric Hospital to Undergo Rebranding Efforts to Reduce Stigma and Improve Accessibility

The 131-year-old Psychiatric Hospital is set to undergo a rebranding as part of efforts to reduce the stigma preventing people from accessing mental health services, Director of the Psychiatric Hospital David Leacock revealed exclusively to Barbados TODAY.

Health authorities are aiming to ensure that the facility, the island’s sole main provider of mental healthcare, becomes more welcoming to those in need.

Leacock revealed that preliminary discussions have already taken place between the Ministry of Health and the hospital’s management.

“The minister himself, the Minister of State in the Ministry of Health and Wellness [Davidson Ishmael], would have raised this matter with us a few weeks or months ago, having the need for us to more or less, improve access to services from our end, because of the idea of it not carrying that longstanding stigma associated with being the hospital and where it came from,” he said.

He acknowledged that, despite efforts to encourage people to seek help regardless of where they access it, negative associations with the Psychiatric Hospital persist.

“That’s understandable, but it is something we are definitely looking at, and hopefully, in the near future, it would be supported towards a name change,” he added.

The Psychiatric Hospital began in 1893 as the Mental Asylum when it opened on the site of the Jenkinsville plantation in Black Rock.

Successive generations of Barbadians referred to the asylum–later renamed the Mental Hospital and then the Psychiatric Hospital–by its location, ‘Jenkins’ and ‘Black Rock’. The Victorian-era buildings and layout have remained largely unchanged with modest improvements over the intervening years.

Leacock was keen to stress that the planned rebranding is not just about changing the name.

“The idea of a name change is not just that, but also bringing awareness to persons about what it is that [the Psychiatric Hospital] does, and hopefully with that, we can get a better understanding of the role that we play, and hopefully some of the issues that they have in seeking care wouldn’t be as many as they are now,” he explained.

The hospital director stressed that the institution will be careful not to reinforce stigma by creating divisions based on socio-economic status. “Yes, we are mindful that persons may say, ‘I am not mentally ill’ and therefore should be seeking services in a place where persons are mentally ill. The reality is that, within our population, a quarter of all persons will experience mental health challenges in their lifetime, whether it be depression, some persons or families will experience mental health challenges,” he pointed out.

Leacock further stressed the importance of avoiding the “re-stigmatisation” of clients who already access the hospital’s services by how new patients are treated.

“We don’t want a situation where, in trying to offer our services, we, in turn, are turning away persons because we create divisions to say that one set of persons is this way, and the next set is that way,” the hospital official said.

He also stated that the Black Rock, St Michael hospital should not be viewed as a last resort or a place of punishment but as a therapeutic environment for individuals in need of assistance. He acknowledged that while the preference is for community-based treatment, some individuals are best served in the hospital setting.

“A large part of what we have been doing in the last three or four years in relation to expansion has been from the community-based standpoint. The posts of psychologists, social workers, and a medical doctor have augmented our community services, and that has seen a very high increase in the number of persons being seen at the community level. I have seen a high level of persons who have seen either the doctors or the nurses,” he said.

Despite the growth of community services, Leacock admitted that admissions to the Psychiatric Hospital have also increased. He revealed that the institution has been actively engaged in public awareness campaigns to address the mental health challenges faced by at-risk youth and the wider population.

Calls for the rebranding of the hospital have also come from external sources. Last week, Shaquani Hunte, the new president of the Young Democrats and a youth representative on the Democratic Labour Party’s Crime Commission, made a similar proposal during a special youth edition meeting of the commission. Hunte highlighted the need to address the mental health crisis among young people and noted that stigma often prevents them from seeking help, even when they are able to articulate the pressures they face.

At a 2022 inquest into the shooting death of a mentally disturbed man in 2016, the coroner Graveney Bannister recommended that the Psychiatric Hospital be renamed and rebranded to erase the stigma associated with the mental hospital.

“It is unfortunate in Barbados the stigma that is attached to mental health illnesses for persons with mental health. For some reason, people do not want to go to the Psychiatric Hospital because of that stigma.

“I would recommend that the place be given a remake – a new name, a new ethos, maybe call it a wellness institution as we have seen in other jurisdictions instead of calling it the Psychiatric Hospital. . . . Something away from the name psychiatric. Change the ethos so that it will be accepted by both patients and the general public,” the coroner recommended.

emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb