JAMAICAN men who have simultaneous multiple sex partners have a mental illness.

This is the assertion of leading Jamaican psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry at the University of the West Indies Dr Frederick Hickling.

Speaking with the Sunday Observer after the recent launch of a mental health campaign at the university’s Mona campus, Hickling knocked the practice of Jamaican men having — as captured in the lyrics of a popular song by dancehall artiste Beenie Man — ‘gyal in a bungle’.

The professor also trashed the psychological associations often made between Jamaican men and their African ancestors, many of whom practised polygamy.

“I believe we have a completely wrong perception about polygamy. We just don’t know anything about it and people use it as an excuse for transgressive behaviour. I don’t believe it is a normal thing to have several women at the same time,” he said.

But the practice, of which some women are also guilty, is more than just transgressive and abnormal, said the psychiatrist, who has more than 40 years’ clinical experience. He said it is akin to an illness, a disease. Hickling made his point using an example of a man whose wife and child found out he had another family when they stumbled upon each other at the school where both children were about to enrol. The example was first referenced by educator Sandra Bramwell Riley, who was among the presenters at the campaign launch.

“I think that is pathology. I think something is abnormal about the man to have kept that relationship secret from his wife. I think that is a form of transgression; a form of deception about the way he is living on a daily basis,” said Hickling. “It created a huge amount of stress on the wife when she learned about it; you heard Mrs Bramwell say she ran out screaming. It creates all kinds of mental pathology, and think about the children who are meeting each other for the first time.

“I think that in this culture we are enticed by transgression and we condone transgressive behaviour. We more condone transgression than we condone normality. When somebody comes to you and asks for a ‘bly’ they are really saying ‘allow me to do something that is wrong instead of doing something for myself’. I think that is absolutely wrong and I think it is abnormal and I think it is a form of psychological denial about things that we know we ought not to be doing,” he said.

The professor gave other examples of abnormal behaviour such as stealing, killing and lying and said there was a thin line between a mere abnormality and a mental disorder. The point at which they blur, he said, is when one identifies in or of himself that something is wrong based on the established norms of the society in which he lives.

“I think when you begin to have a problem in oneself or a problem with other people, then abnormal behaviour becomes a mental illness,” said Hickling. “In other words, if I believe that something is wrong with what I’m doing, then it is almost sure that I’m having a mental unhappiness within me. In psychiatry we call it dystonic behaviour, as opposed to syntonic behaviour, which is when you don’t feel any way about it. That’s also an indicator of abnormality, but the critical issue, certainly from my point of view, me as a psychiatrist, is you coming to me and saying ‘I have a problem’. That’s what makes it a problem because you have identified it in yourself.

“I grew up in an environment in which the norms of my family and my society are that it is a man and a woman living together and have one family relationship. That is the norm in Jamaican society,” said Hickling. “It is a few exceptions that have been trying to create this vision of having multiple families as being a normal thing. I do not believe it is a normal thing and I believe that we have got to be very firm with transgression in this country and we have got to really begin to not condone it, not to accept it and not accept it as regular, normal practice.”

Among those “exceptions” to which he referred, was Caribbean music, which he feels largely glorifies cheating and multiple partners.

Reggae artiste Beenie Man, for example, chanted:

Man fi have nuff gyal and gyal inna bungle

Gyal from Rema, gyal from Jungle.

There was also the Bim and Clover ballad that went:

I would like you and my sweetheart to be friends

‘Cause that’s the only way your jealousy will end

I don’t understand why you want a whola man

While others have to borrow from their friends.

“It reflects the kind of attitude we have in the Caribbean towards transgression. That’s a very male, chauvinistic position where the man believes he can do what he wants, and when he wants. This is neither a pandemic, nor is it soft. It is an epidemic and it is hard,” he said during the mental health campaign launch, an initiative of a group of final-year students at the Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication (CARIMAC).

Earlier this year, Hickling and colleague Dr Vanessa Paisley presented findings from research they conducted which said that 40 per cent of Jamaicans suffered from a mental disorder.

“Our research suggested that 40 per cent of the population of this country have a mild or moderate or severe personality disorder. That means that four out of every 10 people in this room have some kind of mental pathology,” he said.

What’s more, the professor said, people all have abnormalities within them which dictate how they handle stressful situations that have the potential to push them over the edge.

“Stress is something normal in life. Stress is an everyday phenomenon. What the problem is, is that we have abnormalities in us that can’t deal with the stress,” he said. “There are some of us who have resilience and strength, who can beat the stress, so therefore we have to find a way to move from the abnormal within us into the normal, to move into the area of resilience and strength…

“All of us have problems in ourselves. There is no one in Jamaica who can say, ‘I have not experienced these problems, these stresses, or experienced these difficulties.

“When you ask Jamaican people about behaviour and about mental illness they will tell you that people are either mad, or bad, or sinful. But to the psychiatrist, mad, bad and sinful are the same thing; they are all in the same category.”

But, the professor said, it is crucial to get past the negative and focus on solutions, which include increasing the number of mental health-care professionals in the island and improving the quality of care that is offered.

“Moving from the problem to the solution by discussion and confrontation [is critical]. We have to move from the negative to the positive. If you talk about the 40 per cent of people who have a problem, you also have to talk about the 60 per cent who are well and who are doing well, and we have to focus on getting the 40 per cent over into the 60 per cent,” said Hickling.

The CARIMAC campaign, which ran from April 7-14 under the theme ‘Brain power and mental wellness — A thin line between mental illness and abnormal behaviour’ was intended to sensitise the student population to the issue of mental health.