Healing Together: Community-Rooted Psychosocial Care, Climate Trauma, and the Re-Imagining of Caribbean Mental Health Practice in the Grenadines
Healing Together is a collaborative psychosocial initiative between The Hub Collective Inc. and MindTHRIVE Co., developed in response to Hurricane Beryl's devastation across SVG in 2024. Delivered by local practitioners across Mayreau, Union Island, and Bequia, it integrates Psychological First Aid, counselling, peer support, and nature-based practices within a trauma-informed, culturally grounded framework. The project argues for a shift from clinic-bound mental health models toward collective, place-based care systems suited to Caribbean SIDS facing recurrent climate shocks.
Canouan Cohort Image by Danté Ollivierre
In July 2024, Hurricane Beryl delivered catastrophic destruction across St. Vincent and the Grenadines, exposing not only infrastructural fragility but deep, long-suppressed layers of psychosocial vulnerability. In response, Healing Together, a collaborative initiative between The Hub Collective Inc. and MindTHRIVE Co., emerged as a culturally grounded, community-rooted psychosocial intervention designed and delivered by local practitioners for local communities. This reflective, practice-based article documents the conceptual foundations, implementation experience, and emergent strategies of the Healing Together project across Mayreau, Union Island, and Bequia between April and October 2025.
Grounded in Caribbean worldviews of collective care, relational healing, and embodied resilience, the project integrates Psychological First Aid, one-on-one counselling, peer support, creative reflection, and nature-based and somatic practices within a trauma-informed, climate-attuned framework. Drawing on programme data, community feedback, and practitioner reflection, the article situates Healing Together as an applied model of reimagined Caribbean psychology and Care praxis. It argues for a shift from individualised, clinic-bound mental health paradigms toward collective, place-based, and culturally responsive systems of care within Small Island Developing States (SIDS) facing recurrent climate shocks.
Bequia Cohort in The Hub Collective’s Bush Medicine Community Garden. Image by Danté Ollivierre
The reflection traces how Phase 1 surfaced latent trauma while exposing fragile referral systems, and how Phase 2, supported by the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives (CFLI), formalises continuity of care, strengthens inter-island access, and expands services to Canouan. By centring community realities and participatory practice, Healing Together is offered as a transferable model for decolonial, disaster-responsive mental health and community care in the Caribbean.
The above is a selection of images from our programs across Union Island, Mayreau, Canouan and Bequia.
The paper has been submitted to the special Issue, Roots, Rhythms, and Resilience: Caribbean Psychology Reimagined in the Caribbean Journal of Psychology.