CHILD and family therapist and executive director of the Montego Bay-based Family and Parenting Centre, Dr Beverley Scott is calling for “very, very serious interventions” for children featured in vicious school clashes, some of which have ended in fatalities. Dr Scott says Jamaica is reaping the whirlwind of untreated childhood behavioural disorders that have their genesis in toxic home environments.

“These children need psychosocial interventions, psychological interventions; some of them need psychiatric interventions,” Dr Scott, who is a trained professional in the field of child therapy, told the Jamaica Observer in a recent interview.

She said while children are not to be classified as “mentally ill”, “some have behavioural disorders that they developed based on how they have been treated at home”.

“Many of them, they have disorders that we need to investigate, study and treat. It’s not that they are ordinary children, they have developed some childhood disorders that have not been dealt with and they go right into adolescence with them — and these are what is causing some of the problems in the society,” she said grimly.

Her observations come on the heels of the latest incident of violence involving students last Monday which saw 20-year-old student Akeilia White being fatally stabbed by a 17-year-old classmate at Catholic College of Mandeville in Williamsfield, Manchester. Another teen was also wounded in that incident. The student offender has since been charged with murder and wounding with intent.

And in April, 15-year-old Irwin High School student Raniel Plummer was stabbed to death by a 14-year-old schoolmate during an altercation.

Horrifying Jamaicans, these incidents occured against the background of several vicious fights involving students from various institutions, which have gone viral over the past months.

SCOTT… Many of them, they have disorders that we need to investigate, study and treat.

According to Dr Scott, the maelstrom of emotional trauma being carried by students nowadays exceeds the skill level of guidance counsellors.

“Guidance counsellors are trained to guide and counsel, they are not trained to give therapy and, [for] some of these children, guidance and counselling won’t help them. They need psychotherapy, they need rational emotive therapy, and they need cognitive behaviour therapy so they can change their mindset,” Dr Scott stated.

“Another level of training is needed to deal with these children. The challenges that these children come with nowadays far exceed the challenges that guidance counsellors are trained to deal with,” she opined further.

She, in the meantime, lamented the lack of effective parenting and even the absence of parents from the lives of their children during the critical teen years.

“Parents have given their children over to social media to parent them and that is a major, major problem. Parents don’t sit down with their children and talk to them anymore. Parents don’t listen to them. The teenage years are the years when children need to talk to their parents, and these are the years when parents should try to keep the bond with their children because, as a teenager, the child wants independence and if the parents don’t guide them, then they will stray. If parents don’t guide them carefully they will lose their children — they will lose them to social media, they will lose them to peer pressure, they will lose them to bullying and all those things,” she said.

She encouraged parents to acquaint themselves with their children’s peers and backgrounds.

“These years are turbulent. Parents should know their children’s friends because peer pressure is a key element in the lives of teenagers. Children choose their peers based on their background, so you find that children who are from a decent home where people are not aggressive and all of that, they choose peers of that sort. Children who have been brought up in aggressive homes, their parents beat them and there is violence, they choose violent peers,” she schooled.

Added Dr Scott: “Parents have to ensure that when they send their children out there, they send children who are properly trained, children who have values, children who are disciplined so that they choose the right peers — because one of the problems with these teenagers is the peers that they choose.

“I think we need some more parenting programmes across the board. I think the Ministry of Education should introduce some more parenting programmes through the schools,” she suggested, adding, “Many children are living in homes where they are orphans in their homes because they don’t have good mothers or fathers.”

In addition, she mooted the introduction of more jingles and programmes exploring violence and promoting alternatives to dealing with “provocation”.

Figures provided to the Jamaica Observer by the Statistics and Information Management Unit of Jamaica Constabulary Force paint a grim picture of the violence being experienced by Jamaica’s children.

In 2023 alone, 20 children were killed by the gun, six by knives, one by stoning, three under other tragic circumstances, and 49 were victims of grievous sexual assault. Since the start of 2024, nine have been killed by the gun, two by the knife, and two under other tragic circumstances. Between January 2023 and May 14 this year, nine Jamaican children between the ages of nine and 17 have taken their lives, according to the unit. In 2022, 64 individuals committed suicide, four of whom were below the age of 18.