A cease and desist order has been served on an overseas-based counselling professional who had been slated to administer a raft of mental diagnostic tests to primary and high school students from February 5 to 25, after concerns were raised about her competencies by local experts.

But the counselling professional, Dr Lisa Hall, says she has no intention of cancelling her plans.

The initiative, which is being spearheaded by local lobby group Global Charity for All and St Catherine Justices of the Peace (JP) Association, was to see Dr Hall, who they have described as a psychologist and community psychotherapist, offering free psychological testing for primary and high school students in several parishes over the period.

Those services include clinical interviews; mental status examinations; vocabulary sub-tests; computation sub-tests; and the Bender visual-motor gestalt test, second edition, which gives a description of visual-perceptual and motor functions, general and behaviour observations, among others.

However, according to Jamaica Observer sources, regulatory body, the Council for Professions Supplementary to Medicine, based on the concerns raised by Jamaican Psychological Society, wrote to Hall indicating that she was being barred from conducting any testing here, given that she was not qualified to carry out those procedures.

Hall’s resume, a copy of which was obtained by the Observer, says she earned a Master of Science in Psychology from Capella University in 2014 and a Doctorate of Philosophy in Research Psychology from Walden University in 2022.

According to Observer sources, Hall was registered here as a licensed professional counsellor despite a licence which had been issued to her here classifying her as a psychologist. The sources also claimed that the absence of any evidence of practicum experience or internship for her masters and doctoral degrees have been classified as “a red flag” by the experts in the field here.

“Her background is really social work; she is a clinical social worker but she has been doing this for years in Jamaica. This only came to our attention because we are paying a lot more attention. We had some challenges; there is no one person who can do so many things and deal with so many children. And what happens after you have dealt with them?” one expert with whom the paper spoke questioned.

“Those are the challenges we have. We may be poor but there is a way that we deal with our children and make sure that they are healed and helped, and not harmed. She is doing a noble thing but the competencies that are there will not allow her to do half of what she is undertaking,” the individual said, adding that Hall has been given adequate notice to allow her to cancel her plans.

But Hall, when asked by the Observer on Monday if she intended to continue with her plan, despite the controversy, said: “Yes ma’am, yes ma’am.

“I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t know what I was doing. If I wasn’t qualified to do it, I wouldn’t. All our tests are computerised. You pull the information from the child and the parent, you document and put it into the system, and it gives you the results. Yes, you have to be degreed and yes, you have to have the training, but all the tests are computerised,” she insisted.

“Tell them stop being a hater. They don’t have to worry about what I am qualified to do. Come and sit with me and see what I am doing. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I can just come to Jamaica and do what I want to do, no ma’am,” she said.

She was also quick to point out that this has not been her first venture.

“Last year I saw about 80 kids. The parents they came in, they pretty much knew what was happening to their children but they just did not have the verification. Their parents were very pleased,” Hall told the
Observer. She, however, said this year would see her wrapping up activities under her non-profit organisation RHI in Jamaica.

According to Hall, who said she started her work in Jamaica some 10 years ago by providing prosthetic limbs for children, she intends to host a senior citizens’ ball for some Jamaicans next year when she returns.

Last week, president of Global Charity for All, Justice of the Peace Cleon Porter told the Observer that the demand for the sessions — which are slated to be offered to students in the St Catherine area at the Youth Innovative Centre in Edgewater Portmore — has gone beyond the parish.

“Based on the responses we are getting it’s not only going to be in St Catherine because other schools, like the YMCA Kingston, want us to come there and do their entire school population, and other schools in St Elizabeth and Manchester want us to come,” Porter told the Observer.

“There is a need in Jamaica for students to get tested psychologically so that they can move on to different schools. The waiting list is very long in Jamaica, and some parents have to wait for all a year to get these kinds of testing, and when they even get through, it’s very expensive. So, this now is a breath of fresh air, a kind of relief for these persons,” noted Porter.