BLACK RIVER, St Elizabeth — A special local authority subcommittee focused on issues relating to mental illness is being set up here in response to recent violent incidents — including one murder — said to have involved perpetrators of unsound mind.

Mayor of Black River and chairman of the St Elizabeth Municipal Corporation Richard Solomon announced the formation of the subcommittee at last Thursday’s monthly meeting of the municipality.

On Friday, February 7, a 20-year-old HEART/NSTA Trust trainee Iyanla Hicks was found dead at home in Thornton, northern St Elizabeth.

Her 22-year-old brother, who is said to be mentally ill, has since been charged for her murder.

And last Tuesday, a machete-wielding man, said to have a history of mental illness, entered the grounds of Retirement Primary School, close to Maggotty in northern St Elizabeth, allegedly injuring an ancillary worker and issuing violent threats.

Last week’s violent incident at Retirement Primary is said to be the sixth such carried out by the same person at that school, including late 2022 when a former principal was seriously injured.

Chief of police in St Elizabeth, Superintendent Coleridge Minto, told last Thursday’s meeting that the attacker at Retirement Primary was in police custody and was receiving medical treatment from mental health staff.

Reports last week originating in the Retirement community say the mentally ill man was held by residents and turned over to police who took him to hospital. However, he returned to the community causing widespread unease.

Chairman of Retirement Primary School board Herman Samuels told the Jamaica Observer on Wednesday that “…The school is unsettled when he is around. Teachers, students and parents are unsettled.”

In announcing the formation of the subcommittee on mental health, Solomon, who is councillor for the New Market Division (Jamaica Labour Party), said, “We can start from where we are, so we can be advocates and get some attention to this critical matter [mental health].”

His announcement followed an enquiry from Councillor Layton Smith of the Myersville Division (People’s National Party) as to what was being done to secure mentally ill people who sometimes turn violent.

Medical officer for St Elizabeth Dr Tonia Dawkins-Beharie told councillors and others at the monthly meeting that the subcommittee would seek to ensure “strengthening” of response to mentally ill patients in the community during emergencies and “continuous follow-up”.

There would also be efforts to have greater and more efficient collaboration with the police “in terms of training…how to deal with crisis intervention… that’s something that’s coming on stream”, she said.

She also spoke of suggestions which she later explained to the Sunday Observer were “purely exploratory” for “the possibility of an interim facility for those who [can’t] be managed in the hospital or in the community… so that we have that transition phase…”

Dawkins-Beharie told journalists that the special subcommittee would seek to deal with “some things within our scope locally [which] we can address locally and tighten up”.

However, she said, “There are other policies, procedures that we may have to advocate for at a higher level. But we will closely examine the situation outside of the regular [municipal] committees with specific focus on mental health issues across the parish…”

Dawkins-Beharie repeatedly emphasised last Thursday that mental health issues aren’t just “a health problem or a security problem” but an “all of us problem across society. It can affect anyone of us”. All of which means that there is need to reduce stigma and discrimination in relation to the mentally ill, she said.