A former Principal of Codrington College Canon Noel Titus was reported in Barbados Today as saying that Barbadians had a tendency to avoid the truth about the issues plaguing their society.

“We need not to close our eyes to the reality because we are developing a culture of sugar-coating things rather than facing them. We do not want to admit that they are there, and we find some way to make them look good.” (Barbados Today, February 4, 2019).

Sugar-coating, however, is not just a Barbadian weakness, it is very much at the heart of some of the major issues facing Jamaica, despite the loud roar of toothless lions and their states of emergency (SOEs).

In the area of crime management we have ignored both data and the warnings from our psychologists and psychiatrists. Psychologist Dr Wendel Abel, along with the late Dr Frederick Hickling, has been highlighting the presence of mental disorders among our population. Any crime solution ought to swing the pendulum in this direction rather than embracing the unscientific diagnosis that the majority of Jamaica’s fundamentalist religious organisations posture as a solution — demon possession.

Professor Hickling once told The Gleaner that Jamaicans tend to associate demon possession with mental illness because of a religious predisposition.

“Jamaicans associate mental illness with demon possession not only because of inability to understand but because of a religious mindset that presupposes the existence of demons.” (The Gleaner, September 3, 2015), and thus we have failed in our quest to help abused people get professional help.

In a June 2021 report, the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (Capri) included a 2014 study of 1,185 adolescents in Jamaica that “found that approximately 15 per cent displayed depression and anxiety symptoms. Estimates by specialists in the field state that 160,000 or 20 per cent of Jamaican children have a mental disorder, and 40,000 or five per cent have serious mental disorders. Another survey done in 2019, which assessed broader indicators of mental and emotional well-being, showed that 45 per cent of adolescents in Jamaica had consistently experienced anxiety symptoms, ranging from feelings of nervousness, restlessness, worry, and annoyance. Sixty per cent of children in State care exhibit psychosocial problems and 76 per cent exhibit maladjusted behaviours, including social withdrawal, aggression, and suicidal tendencies”.

No doubt, having ignored our psychologists, many of these people have now developed and are exhibiting toxic shame behaviours as a result of further acts of dehumanisation, which is linked to a range of social, psychological, and demographic antecedents with far-reaching social and psychological consequences.

Although I am not a psychologist, it is my opinion that Jamaica’s murder problem is compounded by consistent toxic shame that often results in shame-ridden people lacking a sense of self and being dominated by their false self, which develops into an internalised practice of self-erasure in later life, contributing to a general numbness surrounding emotion.

No doubt, since gaining Independence in 1962, the rise of the garrison phenomenon due to our tribal politics, organised poverty, and poor parenting have caused what our foreparents were able to resist during the atrocities of slavery — the destruction of the human self.

I am therefore shocked to find that, among the 13 signatories to Jamaica’s National Consensus on Crime, there are no representatives from the behavioural disciplines. As a matter of fact, I brought this matter to the attention of Dr Abel, who is in agreement that the monitoring committee needs input from our psychiatrists and psychologists in order to seriously address the nation’s crime crisis.

If we are serious about stemming crime, especially murder, we ought to stop the sugar-coating and address the reality of mental disorders within our population.

dm15094@gmail.com