Editor: The EC $117,000 a year the Government is offering for a psychiatrist is a joke – or worse, an insult; that’s less than US $44,000 per annum. No reputable psychiatrist is going to lower himself to work for such a paltry sum. The mean salary for a board certified psychiatrist is over US $190,000 a year.

As to the supposedly posh furnishings and appointments in the new mental health facility, the pictures I have seen display rows of beds lined up, “cheek to jowl,” with inches separating them.{{more}} I lived in a barracks for eight weeks of basic training in the army and we had more room between the beds. So, will we have a neurasthenic in a bed next to a manic depressive, next to a delusional psychotic, next to a schizophrenic? Or, lacking a psychiatrist, since there is no one on staff capable of making an accurate clinical diagnosis, are they all on heavy doses of Thorazine? That’ll keep ‘em quiet.

I note in passing that the Pan American Health Organization is paying for the retrofitting of eight medical facilities (hospitals and clinics) here in St Vincent – source of planning and funding to be played down, St Vincent Government credit and self-praise to be extolled, no doubt. Money for this comes from PAHO, which is funded in part from the recently and recurrently demonized UK (“repressive colonialists”), or is that just more demagogic rhetoric? “Mom and dad paid my bills, even after I moved out, but I still hate them.” We have no funds for health care, we have to build an airport!” Lord, love a duck!

John Watson