Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Can­dace was a nor­mal fun-lov­ing teen at­tend­ing a pres­ti­gious school in North Trinidad. She loved the colour pur­ple and en­joyed lim­ing at the mall with her friends. One day af­ter re­ceiv­ing her CAPE re­sults in 2009, Can­dace tried to throw her­self off a build­ing. Male teach­ers had to phys­i­cal­ly re­strain her. Checks at the de­nom­i­na­tion­al school lat­er re­vealed that sev­er­al fe­male stu­dents were en­gag­ing in im­pul­sive Self Mu­ti­lat­ing Be­hav­iours (SMB), in­clud­ing su­per­fi­cial wrist and deep arm cut­ting. Can­dace's ex­pe­ri­ence is one of many that have been re­port­ed over the past few years in schools through­out the coun­try.

In 2005, a macabre sto­ry of deep-wrist cut­ting sur­faced at a school in rur­al south Trinidad. Stu­dents would go to the back of the school and en­gage in self mu­ti­la­tion. A book of witch­craft was used to seal the curs­es which the stu­dents placed up­on stu­dents at a neigh­bour­ing school us­ing their own blood. In 2010, a stu­dent from a pres­ti­gious girls' high school in South Trinidad suc­ceed­ed in tak­ing her own life. Her friends were baf­fled. No­body could un­der­stand why the Low­er Sixth stu­dent stran­gled her­self with a rope in her bed­room. Since her death, school sources said more than 11 pupils have been treat­ed for sui­ci­dal ten­den­cies and de­pres­sion which led to self mu­ti­la­tion. Ear­li­er this year, a male stu­dent from a pres­ti­gious South school ad­mit­ted to smok­ing mar­i­jua­na to as­sist him in cop­ing with his aca­d­e­m­ic stud­ies.

A se­nior school source says too of­ten stu­dents are pushed in­to de­pres­sion be­cause teach­ers in­sist they up­hold the good name of the school, even though some of them are not ca­pa­ble of win­ning schol­ar­ships. "It is all a com­pe­ti­tion for schol­ar­ships which makes ab­solute­ly no sense be­cause in any case ed­u­ca­tion is free," the teacher said. "I have seen chil­dren go in­to se­vere de­pres­sion be­cause they just can­not cope with the aca­d­e­mics. "Some of the old­er teach­ers push the chil­dren...There are those cho­sen from the 20 per cent list who get de­pressed be­cause they can­not cope with the work­load." The teacher added that the com­pe­ti­tion at the school was high.

"It is all about win­ning the schol­ar­ships and every day chil­dren in­flict­ing harm on them­selves be­cause of de­pres­sion," the teacher said. "It is dis­gust­ing be­cause in any case UWI is free...Gov­ern­ment is pay­ing for tu­ition." One of the stu­dents who was in­ter­viewed ad­mit­ted that poor grades of­ten made her de­pressed be­cause she knew she was dis­ap­point­ing her moth­er. "I want to be bright like my friends," she said. "My moth­er lives alone be­cause dad­dy left us a long time ago.

"I want her to be proud of me but she is not...She al­ways wants me to do bet­ter. "When I cut my­self, I feel stronger to cope with the anger I feel against my moth­er. "My moth­er does not un­der­stand me...All she wants is for me to get a schol­ar­ship like...(name called)." The girl said slash­ing her arm takes away the pain in her heart. But she de­nied ever con­sid­er­ing sui­cide. Her moth­er be­lieves that the slash­ing is just a phase that will go away. "She has every­thing she wants...It is her friends who are in­flu­enc­ing her," the girl's moth­er said. "I have tak­en her to a coun­sel­lor and she will be just fine."

DON'T IG­NORE THE SIGNS

But pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion Zena Ra­matali said too of­ten par­ents ig­nored the tell-tale signs of child­hood de­pres­sion. She ex­plained that there was a need to have more psy­cho­log­i­cal as­sis­tance for the chil­dren. Say­ing that the dig­i­tal age has cre­at­ed more con­cerns, Ra­matali not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment had start­ed putting mea­sures in place to as­sist de­pressed chil­dren. Say­ing with­in re­cent times there had been an in­crease in de­pres­sion and youth sui­cide, Ra­matali ex­plained: "It is some­thing we don't pay at­ten­tion to...The time has come for us to deal with this mat­ter.

"Par­ents at home need to com­mu­ni­cate with their kids and they need to look at the kind of pres­sure they put on chil­dren to pass ex­ams," she said. "The par­ents play a crit­i­cal role in get­ting kids to talk about their con­cerns and fears. "We need guid­ance of­fi­cers at schools so chil­dren can go to them when they have prob­lems." She added that the Gov­ern­ment must al­so make changes in the cur­ricu­lum to as­sist stu­dents in cop­ing with the prob­lems as­so­ci­at­ed with on­line so­cial net­work­ing. "In the cur­ricu­lum, we need health and fam­i­ly life ed­u­ca­tion," Ra­matali said.

"It should be a sep­a­rate sub­ject and not to be in­fused with oth­er sub­jects in the cur­ricu­lum...Chil­dren must learn how to make in­formed de­ci­sions and choic­es. "We have to help them with prob­lem solv­ing so in­stead of slash­ing their wrists, they will de­vel­op skills to cope and anger man­age­ment." Morals and spir­i­tu­al val­ues should al­so be honed so that chil­dren would not feel lone­ly when de­pres­sion hits, Ra­matali added. The NPTA head al­so called for prop­er train­ing of teach­ers and par­ents. "This is most im­por­tant es­pe­cial­ly for teach­ers in pres­tige schools who must un­der­stand that stu­dents should not be over­bur­dened with aca­d­e­mics so much so that they can­not func­tion or fit in­to so­ci­ety," she said.

"They can­not work with peo­ple be­cause they are pres­sured so much in­to pass­ing ex­ams and they don't have so­cial in­ter­ac­tion skills. "Teach­ers must play a role in help­ing the chil­dren to re­lax, rather than to pres­sure them to ex­cel." With re­gard to the me­dia, Ra­matali said par­ents must be con­scious of the type of mu­sic and videos that their chil­dren are ex­posed to. "Some of the mu­sic in­cites vi­o­lence," she said. "Mu­sic does some­thing to the mind so we have to look at that and en­cour­age the chil­dren to ab­sorb con­scious mu­sic." She al­so said that the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion should con­duct psy­chi­atric and psy­cho-so­cial tests to en­sure that qual­i­ty cit­i­zens are brought on as teach­ers.

Ra­matali added that more ag­gres­sive train­ing of stu­dent coun­sel­lors must al­so be­gin. "Chil­dren have so much so­cial prob­lems now...We need the guid­ance of­fi­cers to be there for them," she said,

"Right now the ex­ist­ing coun­sel­lors are over­bur­dened and the min­istry does not have the amount to sup­ply the schools. "Gov­ern­ment and the min­istry must work on this to en­sure that there are ad­e­quate num­bers of so­cial work­ers and school psy­chol­o­gists in the na­tion's schools."

WHY ADO­LES­CENTS SELF MU­TI­LATE

Cyn­thia Franklin, Mary Beth Har­ris, Paula Allen-Mear­es in their book-The School Ser­vices Source­book: A guide for School-based Pro­fes­sion­als-said su­per­fi­cial and deep cut­ting, self burn­ing and wrist slash­ing were signs of Im­pul­sive Self Mu­ti­lat­ing Be­hav­iours (SMB). "The self mu­ti­la­tion be­hav­iour fre­quent­ly has a sym­bol­ic el­e­ment such as clean­ing and pun­ish­ment," the book states. "This form of SMB is fre­quent­ly ob­served in in­di­vid­u­als di­ag­nosed with per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­ders, eat­ing dis­or­ders, stress dis­or­ders, de­pres­sion and post trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der.

"Most re­search on im­pul­sive self mu­ti­la­tion sug­gests that such be­hav­iour is a cop­ing strat­e­gy. "Re­search ex­am­in­ing self mu­ti­la­tion re­veals that it is done by youths who be­come stressed by nu­mer­ous de­mands placed on them by so­ci­ety, as well as dif­fi­cult so­cial tran­si­tions which oc­cur in the de­vel­op­men­tal stage." In a study done in 1995, Allen-Mear­es iden­ti­fied three rea­sons for cut­ting.

1. To man­age neg­a­tive moods:

Most ado­les­cents re­port feel­ing in­tense­ly an­gry and dis­tressed im­me­di­ate­ly pre­ced­ing the cut­ting. The ado­les­cent gets a thrill of de­per­son­al­i­sa­tion and alien­ation from the world. It makes the per­son feel alive.

2. A re­sponse to be­liefs or ha­bit­u­al thoughts:

Youths who en­gage in self mu­ti­la­tion al­so re­port that it is a way to deal with a sense of "in­ter­nal bad­ness" and anger at oth­er in­di­vid­u­als. It is a way of harm­ing one­self be­cause of feel­ings of be­ing in­ad­e­quate as an in­di­vid­ual.

3. To man­age in­ter­ac­tion with oth­ers:

Some ado­les­cents may en­gage in SMB to ob­tain love and af­fec­tion from sig­nif­i­cant peo­ple in their lives.

PART 2 NEXT WEEK-Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials re­veal the strate­gies in deal­ing with im­pul­sive SMB and men­tal de­pres­sion among stu­dents.