THE recent spike in the number of suspected child suicides has become the catalyst for a renewed focus on teenagers and their emotional needs by the nation’s guidance counsellors and social workers.

Tomorrow, the Jamaica Association of Guidance Counsellors in Education (JAGCE) will launch a Ministry of Education-endorsed national campaign to address teen suicides and abnormal behaviour among the country’s youth.

In the past month alone, there have been three suspected suicides.

Fourteen-year-old St James High School student Shaquilla Calame is believed to have taken her own life at her home in Hendon, Norwood, St James last Sunday after she allegedly stole money from her mother who reprimanded her.

A week before, another St James High School student, Annalise Authurs, of Rose Mount Gardens, Mount Salem, St James, committed suicide at her home. There were reports she had grown depressed over a failed relationship.

One week before that, the body of 15-year-old Tia Murray of Barracks Road, Savanna-la-Mar in Westmoreland, was found hanging from a mango tree in the community, she too is suspected of taking her own life.

The firestorm of public commentary that followed these deaths raised the matter of psychiatric intervention and the importance of teen counselling.

Only recently, in early March, the Observer reported that senior education officer in the Child Guidance Unit of the Ministry of Education Antoinette Brooks conceded that the ratio of students to guidance counsellors in the public school system of 650 to one fell far short of recommendations.

She quoted figures showing that there are only 800 counsellors currently servicing a school population — across infant, primary and high schools — of approximately 650,000 in roughly 1,000 institutions.

The ministry’s own recommendations of an ideal ratio of students to guidance counsellors is 350 to one at the secondary level and 500 to one at the primary level.

In an article carried in the Sunday Observer of March 6, some guidance counsellors attending a special workshop in Kingston claimed that the limited amount of time they are able to spend counselling students versus having to teach in the classroom could be negatively impacting the discovery and treatment of mental disorders among children.

The counsellors said the most common manifestations they observed were Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, depression, and conduct disorder. Other symptoms run the gamut of self-destructive behaviour and include not just anger, avoidance, violence, defiance and lack of productivity, but cutting and suicidal ideation.

It is this increasing incidence of young children with suicidal and other abnormal behaviours that the JAGCE hopes to change by increasing guidance counsellors’ visibility, influence and effectiveness in schools.

The organisation says it intends to get school principals, guidance officers, counsellors, other school personnel, people involved in social services and churches to lead the charge in taking on the mammoth task of changing the trend of self-destructive behaviour among Jamaican children.

According to JAGCE president Dr Grace Kelly — who is also the chair of the Department of Behavioural Sciences at Northern Caribbean University in Manchester — the series of public education activities will begin with a week of prayer from April 16-21, where students will engage in prayer, discussion and counselling sessions.

Underlying this project, she said, is the need to tackle a major challenge, educating parents on recognising signs that their children are in trouble emotionally and mentally.

“We find that the parents don’t have the knowledge of, one, the warning signals, and, two, what to do in cases where they observe that there is a major challenge (among children).”

“We are intending to target parents in the communities and let them know that there is help, there is hope to support them… It is our intention to make linkages with the relevant service support systems, including the Victim Support (Unit), the Child Guidance Unit and so on. So the public awareness is about that, plus it’s about an understanding of, and an appreciation for life,” Kelly told the Sunday Observer.

The JAGCE intends to conduct a series of meetings with Parent Teachers Associations in schools across the country throughout the month of May to teach parents about basic responses to stress among children, and ways to reduce depression and prevent suicide.

Kelly said the apparent increase in suicides, violence and self-destructive behaviours among teens suggests that they are experiencing an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, but her organisation is determined to ‘stand in the breach’ in order to help them understand that: “suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem”.

“We are going to teach them about self-esteem, anger management, how do they respond to their own emotions, how do they respond to the issue of drugs and peer pressure and so on. So they will have different coping mechanisms to support them through their hard times,” said Kelly.

May also marks the start of a series of islandwide peer counselling/mediation sessions designed to increase the number of peer counsellors in schools.

“We know that young people respond to their peers more than they respond to adults. That is a known fact, that has been researched and it has been proven,” she said. “So what we will do is teach their peers what to look for, what signs to look for… what we intend to do is to increase the number of peer counsellors in schools, increase the number of peer counselling clubs or groups, so that every child will have access to someone.”

The association said it intends to establish direct referral protocols through the Ministry of Education’s Guidance Counselling Office to support the peer counselling project.

Also in the works as part of this national guidance counsellor-driven assault on teen suicide is the strengthening of the partnership between the JAGCE and the Red Cross, National Council on Drug Abuse, Rise Life and other private and public counselling agencies. These groups’ resources will be pooled in order to offer training to guidance counsellors who will, in turn, train school personnel, parents and other community members to identify at-risk children and make appropriate referrals for interventions.

The training will not just deal with suicide, but promiscuity, bullying, poverty and neglect, conflict and anger management, grief, death and dying, and sexual offences, among other topics.

A poster competition is to be launched supporting the JAGCE project, also in May, supported by school marches, a walk-a-thon, and other events.