THE blood that has been dotting school yards across Jamaica after violent student confrontations is believed to be the end result of rage which has been bubbling beneath the surface, undetected by parents, guardians and school personnel.

According to Chief Medical Officer of Jamaica Dr Sheila Campbell-Forrester, the writing has long been on the wall but society missed it - to its detriment.

"One of the bits of information that we have had for a very long time is that four per cent of young persons are angry about a lot of things. They are full of rage. When you look at the television when there are these incidents and you look at the faces of some of the young people, they are just very angry. Angry at society, angry at their parents, angry at the teachers," Campbell-Forrester told the Sunday Observer.

At the slightest provocation the pent up rage erupts.

"It all has to do with acting out their feelings. What's happening to them at home and what's happening at school. They lose out at school, lose out at home, lose out in the community," she theorised.
"To be honest with you, I think our children feel unloved, they are not listened to, we are impatient with them and we don't really understand the developmental process," the chief medical officer pointed out.

In the meantime, however, Dr Campbell-Forrester said one crucial area of the violence was also being ignored. It is a cry that often goes unheard.

"One of the areas of violence we ignore is suicide, which is self-violence; and there are many at school who are attempting suicide but you don't get that report," she told the Sunday Observer, noting further that some young persons have been using drugs which cause them to act in inappropriate ways.

"We have to deal with the use of weapons. A long time ago it used to be fist fights; we have accepted a number of things as norm which ought not to be. It's only now that we are trying to take away the implements from them; but we should have seen this a long time in coming because the signs were there," Campbell-Forrester noted. According to a 2005 School-based Survey on Risk and Resiliency Behaviours of 10-15- year-olds, the weapon most often carried (to school and elsewhere) was a knife, and boys were five times more likely than girls to carry a weapon.

"There needs to be a whole change in the mindsets of parents, families, and teachers. All of us have to get together to work through what we are going to do to stem the flood of violence in our schools. If we don't, we are going to pay the price," she warned.

"You can almost say violence ends their careers; sometimes they have nowhere going after that, it's difficult for them to get back into mainstream. A few overcome, but they have to live with that guilt for the rest of their life," she pointed out.

Director of the Violence Prevention Alliance, Dr Elizabeth Ward, also believes rage is at the root of the bloodletting now being played out in schools.

"Violence in society is now filtering into the schools. For every one person that dies, grief councillors say about seven persons are in the process of absolute rage where they can't control what they do; what they are saying, what actions they take because there is no logical control that is in place," she told the Sunday Observer.

"In one of the recent cases, I was told that the child that was involved was in a very traumatic position recently in his family and was acting out what was going on in his life. Rage is a very important issue," she continued.

She too felt that there had been warning signs which have been missed by persons crucial to the process.

"A lot of these incidents in schools actually have a history; usually the child has been giving trouble in school, failing in school, not adjusting well in school.

It's not something that comes overnight. From basic schools you can see the warning signs. Cruelty to animals for example is an indicator. There are signs all along the way.

It has just been left to ferment to a point where you see the violence spilling over into the school grounds. The issue is the quality of the home situation and parenting," she insisted.

The answer she said is in more than a knee-jerk reaction.
"We need to go into the homes of the children who are giving trouble. It's not just sitting in our offices and sending for the parents," she argued.

"One of the things that seems to be a big risk factor is how badly they are beaten up at home. These kids have a history of giving trouble and parents get called in and they in turn call up the children and beat them up. And they get told how stupid and worthless they are and all this anger builds," she noted further.

The 2005 School-based Survey on Risk and Resiliency Behaviours of 10-15-year-olds also found that, 13 per cent of adolescents reported a lifetime experience of any physical abuse. There was no difference between males and females.

According to Ward, it will take a co-ordinated, multifaceted and sustained effort to remedy the situation but it was a question of whether Jamaicans are willing to provide the necessary funds.

"Wherever the programmes have worked for preventing school violence worldwide, it has been a co-ordinated, multifaceted programme. We have good programmes here but cannot expand because of a lack of resources. People balk at the money to do it properly," she said.

"It's a difficult problem and I don't know if we are willing to do the work. All of us have to do that much more. Violence doesn't just go away overnight it takes a long-term effort because there has been so much violence; we have to work longer and harder," she said.

"It's not enough to identify and stigmatise the child, we don't want to label them, put them in a programme preferably within the school. Once we have identified those difficult children we need to visit their homes. The Safe Schools Programme and School Resource Officers are good but cannot work on their own," Dr Ward added.

In the meantime, the 2005 survey said five per cent of adolescents had been stabbed or shot at least once during their lifetime. Almost five out of every 10 adolescents (48 per cent) had seen a dead body other than at a funeral. Thirty-nine per cent of those who had seen a dead body other than at a funeral reported the cause of death to be "shot and killed".

It also found that less than 50 per cent of adolescents 10-15 years old were functionally literate. While girls were significantly more likely to be "functionally numerate than boys, one in every four of the boys surveyed was "not numerate".

Interestingly, in 1998, 31 per cent of all suicides in Jamaica were amongst youth 15-24 years old. Between 1996 and 1998 those suicide rates doubled. Overall it was found that 11 per cent of Jamaican youth 15-24 contemplated suicide at least once and three per cent attempted it multiple times.

The study concluded that mental health should be given priority within health programmes for adolescents and youth. Concerning violence perpetration it said suggestions were that perpetrators of crime and violent acts are mostly young men. In 2000, adolescent males accounted for 26 per cent of the total visits to the accident and emergency units at all government hospitals.

In the meantime, the 2006 Youth Risk and Resiliency Behaviour Survey targeting the 15-19 age group concluded that educators and all adults who interact with youth should be made competent to detect the features of depression and be aware of the appropriate response including knowledge of referral system. It said youth should have increased knowledge about and access to caring and resourceful counselling facilities in order to adequately deal with their concerns, allay fears and provide alternative course of action.

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