In a continued effort to enhance the quality, accessibility, and human rights-based delivery of mental health services across Saint Lucia, the Ministry of Health, Wellness and Elderly Affairs, in collaboration with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), has launched a joint initiative aimed at strengthening capacity within both inpatient and community-based mental health care. The initiative underscores the Government of Saint Lucia’s commitment to promoting a rights- based approach to mental health, ensuring that all individuals receive dignified, compassionate, and recovery-oriented care.
As part of this ongoing collaboration, a five-day Training of Trainers Workshop held from October 13th to 17th, 2025, brings together approximately 30 mental health professionals and individuals with lived experiences. The training is designed to build national expertise, empower participants to become advocates for rights-based care, and support sustainable improvement within the mental health system.
Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Sharon Belmar-George, highlighted the importance of the workshop in building local capacity and supporting the Ministry’s broader reform agenda. “The training is for about 30 healthcare workers and is actually a train the trainer to ensure that there is sustainable capacity with the training that we are receiving. So we have two consultants from the Pan American Health Organization that are here today. This training is very timely and is also critical at this point. We have been working with Dr. Sumitra who is also a PAHO consultant. He has come in and he has done an assessment of our mental health management within the country. He has done quite a few stakeholder consultations in country and he has identified the gaps for implementation and also for improvement. Our mental health policy should be finalized by the end of the year and we also did a review of our mental health legislation which we should also have the first draft by the next quarter. We've also put in place a director of mental health services and all of this is to allow us through the assessment of our system, we've noted that we have quite a few gaps and we want to ensure that our healthcare workers are well trained ensuring that we respect the human rights of our mental health patients”
PAHO Consultant and Workshop Facilitator, Jasmine Kalha, explained that the training encourages health professionals to reflect critically on their current practices and identify realistic opportunities for improvement. “Globally, mental health has become a bit of a challenge. We know that there's lots of evidence to know that mental health care services, the way that they are provided, are often violative of people's rights. But with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, there is a harbinger for hope. There is a guidance for what we need to do. And
quality rights are one of those frameworks that helps to reorient practices from a very medical, biomedical model of care to a rights and recovery-based care. So the training is going to focus on how do we reorient our practices, how do we bring together good examples of care that we're already providing, and what more can we do within the resources that we have and being realistic of what's feasible, but actually move towards the rights and recovery-based care.”
Adding to this, Dr. Claudina Cayetano, another PAHO Consultant and Facilitator, commended Saint Lucia’s continued progress in improving mental health services and integrating mental health into primary health care. “Working with PAHO as the advisor for mental health, I've seen a lot of changes for St. Lucia in terms of looking into this integration of mental health into primary care. I was here before because we were doing a training for health care providers on a program we call MHGAP, and this was to help health care providers to recognize, to manage mental health condition at primary care level. So I'm very pleased to see how St. Lucia is really focusing on mental health, on people's well-being, because that's actually what matters, to be able to provide better services for their people. So this is a great move for us to be here now to do the training on quality rights.”
Through strategic partnerships with organizations like PAHO, Saint Lucia continues to make important strides toward establishing a more inclusive, equitable, and rights-centered mental health system. The Ministry of Health remains committed to ensuring that mental health care is integrated, sustainable, and accessible to all grounded in compassion, respect, and dignity.