A local pastor/psychologist, who is predicting that the stage is set for a crisis in violence and crime in T&T as never seen before, says he has a solution to present to the Ministry of National Security.
Pastor Phillip Reid, who said he worked with gangs in T&T and abroad, is convinced that a criminal could be disarmed with love. Reid said he planned to advance the "love therapy" to the ministry, which he has outlined in a book called The New Love Therapy. The book shows how to use love to heal drug addicts, criminals and gangsters. Reid said: "A lot of the violence (displayed by criminals) is not just because they want money. "Violent people who choose destructive ways to live are those who lack the ability to accept responsibility.
"There is a culture behind criminal behaviour and if the Government doesn't understand it, its call for criminals to put down the guns won't work." Reid, who is counselling two former gang members and people who were in crime, added: "There is a unique culture in the life of crime. "Unless the Government understands it and speaks the language of criminals, its crime-fighting methods will have little effect.
"Violent aggression as a way to deal with criminals will only incense them. "The former criminals I counsel were all terribly abused as children and came from dysfunctional families. "Seventy per cent of the inmates behind bars are from fatherless homes." Reid said schizophrenia (split personality) was closely related to absent fathers. He said: "The child is affected by an absent father from during the mother's pregnancy with him throughout the first year after he is born. "The mother's reaction to the absent father affects her child emotionally." Reid said his book presented a cure and prevention for all non-organic mental, emotional and family-related dysfunction.
He said such dysfunction manifested itself in sexual dysfunction, anger and depression, fear and anxiety, eating disorders and schizophrenia. He said statistics showed the Afro-Caribbean man was more likely to be affected by schizophrenia than anybody else. He further disclosed that three-quarters of mental health problems were related to how human beings dealt with painful encounters when they experienced a sense of hopelessness and despair. Reid said emotionally ill people handled life badly and anger was one manifestation. "Anger is a self-preserving mechanism by which the emotionally ill person protects himself from further damage. "If he had feelings of inferiority, he comes to a point where a display of anger makes him feel superior." Reid said his concept, the love therapy, was psychologically, scientifically and Biblically sound.