In a country where mental health is given superficial consideration or worse yet, is my suspicion that the State and our Minister of Health do not recognise mental health as a national priority, I am left broken every time I see our children in the news damaged, battered and dead.
I'm broken because the same system that denies mental health/illness interventions as necessary is the one charged with the responsibility of caring for our children, establishing such institutions as children's authority and signing treaties on children's rights and then in the main ignoring the mind health of these same children.
We are mainly reactionaries when the issues of child abuse and childhood trauma make the headlines. Those phrases "abuse" and "trauma" give us a rise. The commentary following any such published incident is sustained, emotionally charged, and almost evangelical in posturing. But it fades, quickly, until we have another "public" incident because there's no machinery for continuous engagement of these major issues.
What is it we are building to collectively treat with the mental wellbeing and the mental health and ill health of our children, some genetically or biologically disposed to mental illness, others whose environment and social status act as determinants of psychological development and psychosocial illnesses now and in the adult years?
Here, when we talk about mental health we are still mostly stuck in the vein of association that suggests madness, schizophrenia, and raging insanity. As lucid as I am and as much as I have been successfully managing my mental health, operating at a higher intellectual level than most, I'm still considered mad. You would not imagine how many people in ignorance and out of "fear" have deselected me from their circles because I have exposed my mental health status.
The sad headline on these is that keeping quiet does not make it go away, neither does it abate the incidence, and, worse yet, that silence and unwillingness to confront and expose–for the shame victims are unfairly made to bear–are the very behaviours that empower perpetrators � they can get away with murder here, literally.
And what of verbal and emotional abuse? Who's guarding our children in their homes, communities, among peers, and in the education environment to ensure that they are protected? Who is educating parents to ensure the alleviation of such errors?
Bullying by peers has been taken on in some quarters and such advocacy is welcome. But what of bullying by parents? How many parents understand what constitutes bullying, intimidation, unfair labelling and such, and the negative effects those behaviour have on children? How many teachers are aware of and practise positive reinforcement where the temptation is to belittle and talk down?
How many of us focus on prevention of such behaviour and are focused on protection of the entire wellbeing of the minds, body, spirit, and souls of our children? Who is teaching whom to breed wholesome children in order to inherit a more wholesome society? Does anyone really believe that crime, corruption and deviant conduct are due in part to childhood trauma?
In a 2014 study by Cristina Barboza Sol�s, et al, the researchers commenting on the association of childhood trauma and adult ill health say, "The role of early life experiences on health is of major concern to research. Recent studies have shown that chronic stress may "get under the skin" to alter human developmental processes and impact later health. Our findings suggest that early negative circumstances during childhood... could be associated with physiological wear-and-tear in midlife...
"This relationship was largely explained by health behaviours, body mass index, and socioeconomic status in adulthood, but not entirely. These results suggest that a biological link between adverse childhood exposures and adult health may be plausible.
"The problem is that our life experiences often generate diminished self-worth, fragmentation, isolation, or retreat into ego attachments that disconnect us from ourselves, within; and from others," says Douglas LaBier, PhD.
To be continued
�2 Caroline C Ravello is a strategic communications and media practitioner with over 30 years of proficiency. She holds an MA in Mass Communications and is pursuing the MSc in Public Health (MPH) from the UWI. She has been living/thriving with mental health issues for over 35 years. Write to: mindful.tt@gmail.com