“No man is an island, entire of itself,” poet John Donne famously wrote in the 17th century. “Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”
That notion of our interconnectedness as humans, the power of community and the need to break down barriers is at the heart of ongoing efforts to remove stigma around mental health for youths in Bermuda.
A campaign which ran in May with the tagline ‘We are not an island’ included young people with lived experience of mental health challenges sharing their stories publicly.
Daniel Cavanagh, chief researcher at Bermuda College, who is involved in the anti-stigma initiatives, said that was a significant step for the island.
“One shift that’s really important in this whole narrative is that, even a year ago, no one thought that people would actually come forward and share their personal stories of mental illness,” he said.
“Everyone thought the stigma was just simply too bad.”
He added: “Since then, there have been 21 people that have been trained to share their stories. They’ve been champions that have been trained and that’s what we did in May.
“As part of the 23 events that were officially organised, five of them were social contact events, which means people came forward and shared their stories.”
Changing perceptions
Some events took place at schools and there was also a screening of the film Inside Out, with a panel discussion afterwards.
In October, a youth mental health summit took place, attended by hundreds of youngsters, with hundreds more attending a middle school roadshow.
Dr Cavanagh said those willing to talk about their own experiences, as part of a broader plan to improve youth mental health, were actively helping to change negative perceptions about mental illness.
“For what it’s worth, I think it’s the champions who have come forward and shared their stories that are the most important,” he said.
Stigma surrounding mental health is recognised internationally as one of the most significant barriers to effective mental healthcare.
In small communities, especially islands, it’s especially prevalent and harder to find the resources to tackle it.
But the Government of Bermuda and partners are now focused on doing so, after an adolescent mental health study carried out here in 2022 and 2023 — the first of its kind — confirmed, as expected, that stigma was a serious issue.
That same study, conducted by Dr Cavanagh for his PhD with the help of colleagues in the mental health field here, revealed that the prevalence of depressive and anxiety symptoms among Bermuda’s adolescents surpassed global averages.
After analysing data from the study — collected from 76 per cent of students at Bermuda’s middle and senior schools — a raft of recommendations was drawn up and included in the island’s first youth mental health plan.
Dr Cavanagh said: “All of those recommendations are going to be easier to implement if we start by tackling the stigma.”
The youth study gave experts here a clear picture of the scale of the mental health challenges experienced by adolescents and enabled them to make a compelling argument for the work that needed doing.
Dr Cavanagh said: “We have, arguably, the best data in the region because no one else has conducted a national mental health study on such a scale in the Caribbean.
“And so, this gives us a really strong case for change because we can say, ‘Actually, this requires immediate attention to address.’”
Innovative methods
He described the efforts that have followed the study as “intensely collaborative” and he praised the Ministry of Health for its “really fantastic work with regards to coordinating national mental health anti-stigma efforts”.
Those involved include Vakita Basden, the Mental Health Anti-Stigma Chair for the Department of Health, and co-chair Aminah Simmons, as well as clinical psychologist Dr Shawnee Basden, who is the project manager for the Youth Mental Health Plan, Bermuda Hospitals Board, the Family Centre, MASC and Solstice Bermuda.
Dr Cavanagh explained that stigma causes people who need help to not reach out for it because of “fear that the problem will actually get worse by reaching out, by acknowledging that they have a problem”.
In his previous role as a teacher at Warwick Academy, he saw the effects of it first-hand, with students telling him they were reluctant to speak to a school counsellor, even when struggling mentally.
“There’s this real fear about people finding out everyone else’s business in small island communities, particularly like Bermuda,” he said.
Some innovative ways of dealing with mental health challenges were highlighted to young people as part of the 2025 mental health awareness efforts, such as Lego therapy and mindfulness techniques.
“One thing we’re trying to do is tackle beliefs about treatment, [such as] people thinking that therapy is just about going to someone’s room and talking,” said Dr Cavanagh.
“Actually, there’s so much more. There are so many different options out there in terms of promoting your self-care.”
An Australian, whose PhD is from the University of Melbourne, he chuckled as he explained that surf therapy is “exactly what you think it is”.
“Before you go out onto the water, you go through the theory behind surf therapy, you practise some breathing related techniques, some focused mindfulness techniques.
“And then you go out and try and be at one with nature in the water as part of your meditative and self-care practice.”
Participants who registered at the events in May were able to get a free session of surf or dog therapy.
Dr Cavanagh said there was much more planned to tackle youth mental health and there was a consensus on island that Bermuda was seeing real change in relation to stigma.
“What we’ve seen in the last 12 months, with regards to fighting stigma — many people, key community leaders, have said it’s the most progress they’ve seen in the mental health space in 20 years.”
