Guyana and the pandemic

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2021

⏱️ 17 minutes

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Summary

How has mental health in the South American country been affected during lockdown? According to the World Health Organisation Guyana has for years had one of the highest suicide rates anywhere in the world. So how has the country fared during the pandemic? Ed Butler speaks to Supriya Singh-Bodden, founder of a non-profit organisation The Guyana Foundation, set up to foster development in the country, to Meena Upeachehan who works as a councillor for The Guyana Foundation, and to women in the country who have been suffering depression and domestic abuse. Plus he speaks to Dr Christine Moutier, Chief Medical Officer at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention who says early data shows that suicides have not gone up globally during the pandemic but may rise in the second or third waves.

(Picture: Traditional wooden house on stilts in rural Guyana. Picture credit: Arterra/Marica van der Meer/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Business Daily on the BBC World Service. And for this program, anyway, welcome to Paradise.
0:10.1	Ghana is probably one of the most beautiful countries on the planet, blanketed with unspoilt rainforest
0:18.8	and the most incredible, incredible natural beauty without any signs of
0:26.5	development around it. It's a global treasure. That's the voice of Supriya Singh-Bodden, founder of a
0:33.0	non-profit called the Guyana Foundation set up to foster development here on the southern shores of the
0:40.2	Caribbean. It is really a paradise on earth because we're free of earthquakes, hurricanes. We have an
0:48.4	endless supply of water, incredible agricultural promise. What more could you ask for?
0:54.8	What indeed? My name's Ed Butler. In today's program, the third of our week-long series here on the BBC,
1:01.2	looking at how mental health has changed after one year of the pandemic.
1:05.8	We've come to this lush, lightly populated nation of mountains, beaches and mangroves, with a surprising and
1:12.7	possibly challenging story for you. Because Guyana has for years now had one of the highest
1:18.5	suicide rates anywhere in the world, according to the World Health Organization. That's right,
1:24.0	right here in paradise. The suicide rate is four times the global average. We're going to
1:30.1	look at why that is and how the pandemic has affected things here. So be warned, some of you
1:36.1	could find some of this tough listening. If any of this brings up thoughts or feelings that we're
1:41.3	struggling to handle right now, please, please do get help. Talk to somebody.
1:46.6	That's our message today. If you have problems, talk to someone.
1:50.8	Anyway, back to Guyana. Supriya Singh-Boden. She told me her country's problems really came into focus a few years ago before the pandemic.
1:59.9	We were constantly waking up to the news of people ending their lives by ingesting pesticides.
2:07.0	We had instances where it would be a murder-suicide.
2:12.9	And so the numbers kept growing and the newspaper pages were, you know, exploding with the amount of
2:19.1	people that were ending their lives in this way. So it seemed like a lot. That's what I can say
	...

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