10 Apr NiteCap Journal: Is it time to talk Mental Health in the Virgin Islands?

When people contact me after viewing The Unbreakable Virgin Islanders they’re often overwhelmed by our community’s resilience. 

They stare at me wide-eyed, as if I were a real-life character from Survivor, that soulless pioneer of reality TV. 

The fact that someone actually thought it entertaining to document made-for-TV starvation while some people really starve strikes a nerve in me. 

I guess that’s why viewers of Unbreakable are so enamored by getting to see the story of real life survivors. 

They stop and tell me: 

“Your people have been through so much. And your mother!? She’s such a darling. Can I hug you?”

At 78, with charisma to match a 20-year-old, my mother has become quite the main attraction with her signature gray twists. 

I accept the hug, grateful and inspired, but my subconscious often yells:

Damn our resilience!

Then I snap back to reality, understanding that compared to most of modern society – where entitlement and convenience has all but ended human grit – we do appear to be Unbreakable in the Virgin Islands. 

However, the danger of celebrating our mythical like endurance is that you end up romanticizing our suffering, forgetting that we are indeed human and in fact breakable. 

So when one viewer recently told me thanks for sharing my experience with panic attacks I stood transfixed. 

Finally.

She told me, “I’ve had to deal with panic attacks my entire life, but never got to express it. The film showed me I’m not alone.”

That scene in Unbreakable in which myself and my brother talk about my panic attacks after hurricane Marilyn is one I nearly had edited out of the movie. It’s because Caribbean men aren’t supposed to cry nor are we supposed to reveal any form of emotional vulnerability as doing so showcases weakness. 

Given our history of having to continuously protect our very existence and that of our loved ones from colonizers, makes a strong case for our need to be this way. 

However, I chose to keep that scene in the film because deep down inside I know silent tears are the most painful to bare. 

This is evident by the increase in violent crime we see wreaking havoc in our islands’ most vulnerable communities and now threatening to destroy our collective as a whole. 

It’s been years since I’ve had one of those debilitating panic attacks caused by anxiety which I’ve come to remedy by exercise, healthy dieting and the creative arts. Unfortunately, many in our community lack the access to resources to help them with their own mental health issues that may be more severe and require serious medical intervention.

I’d be unfair without stating that there are local champions on the ground working to safeguard our sanity, like Dr. Celia Victor who leads the Virgin Islands Children’s and Youth Task Force and Suzanne Darrow-Magras at the UVI Center for Excellence in Leadership and Learning. There are others too numerous to mention here and their work is needed now more than ever.

After weathering two record-breaking hurricanes, a pandemic and an economy that was on the brink of collapse; we have all right to feel superhuman. 

We have all right to celebrate our resilience, but not let the hype make us ignore the looming mental crisis threatening to cause more damage than Irmaria ever could.

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