Experts are warning Jamaicans that direct victims of crime isn’t the only avenue for mental health issues to arise.

In fact, the specialist said many people are indirectly affected psychologically by crime through their human desire to stay abreast by way of the news media.

An example of such occured in the past week where for three consecutive days, heart-wrenching crime stories dominated local news and social media.

On Monday afternoon, Jamaica Observer readers were left heartbroken when news em emerged online that six-year-old T’morah McCallum, was in a tenement yard on Text Lane in Central Kingston about 4:00 pm, when a round was discharged from a gun, allegedly being repaired by a 55-year-old man who police believe to be a gunsmith.

She was rushed to Kingston Public Hospital where she was pronounced dead.

On Tuesday morning, not even 24 hours later, 28-year-old teacher Chanel Smith was murdered at the entrance of Sandy Bank Infant School in St Elizabeth, leaving students traumatised.

The Sunday Observer understands that shortly before 8:00 am, two men awaited Smith as she approached the school’s entrance. One of the men shot her then jumped onto a motorcycle being driven by the other and fled the scene.

Then on Wednesday, a man only identified by his alias ‘Chop Chop’ was gunned down on in Eleven Miles in Bull Bay, St Thomas, hours after he was accused of raping a woman from the community.

The woman went to a wake about 1:00 am Wednesday in an area of Eleven Miles, and when she arrived home, she was pounced upon by an armed man who allegedly raped her. The man then fled the area, and the incident was reported to the police. Hours later, the police were notified that Chop Chop was found suffering from bullet wounds in another section of the Eleven Miles area.

He later succumbed to his injuries and the violated woman reportedly identified him as her attacker.

Psychologist Dr Leahcim Semaj told the Sunday Observer that crime should be framed as the “other pandemic” we have in Jamaica.

“For the longest while now, we have been subjected to criminal forces and trying to work with it and through it and around it. On the other end, we who are the public… people who are subjected to crime, it affects us in a number of ways. When you add that media becomes a part of the stress, one of the things that I encourage persons to do is avoid television news that really glorify or dramatise the gore of the crime. That adds too your stress,” Semaj reasoned.

“If you read about it, you can skim through the details. You can skim over it. But then when you look at it and you watch it on television, it has a greater impact on you. I for one avoid that element. There are people who love those kinds of stories. They are drawn to it and that’s why the media house does it. But it adds to the stresses, in that you now see the world.”

Dr Aggrey Irons, consultant psychiatrist told the Sunday Observer that every experience of crime, whether personally experienced or learnt of through news, contributes to mental stress.

“Every experience, whether real or imagined leaves a memory. And the more that people are sensitised to crime, especially violent crime, the more it’s going to become a part of their memory and therefore, a part of their personality. The more that people are exposed to it, the more anxious they become as they both personalise it and internalise it,” he said.

“Worse than that, if it continues to repeat itself, people become immune to it. It doesn’t have the significance that it once did. You’re over flooded with it so you try and avoid it, you try to deny its presence and that will leave us with a society of people who are unfeeling and uncaring and the whole standard with which people uphold life will continue decline which is exactly what is happening now.”

Sadly, six-year-old T’morah McCallum isn’t the only child tragedy reported in recent times. On October 7, five-year-old Denique Salmon was murdered while she slept at her home in Duhaney Park, St Andrew, about 1:00 am when gunshots rang out in the area. When the gunfire subsided, Denique was found shot up.

Children learning of these cases – where other children their age are being killed – in the news presents a serious probelm, Irons stressed.

“Death is something that is far away from the mind of the young and to bring them in contact with it at an early age is to hasten their immunity to it,” he said.

“In other words, the more that they have to do with death and dying and crime and criminality, the more they’ll be inclined to see it as no big thing and the more it will be acceptable in their neighborhoods and in the setup of their lives. We have to reestablish innocence. Children have to learn how to play again and we need to continue to steer them away from cowboy and Indians and police and thief,” he said.

Meanwhile, Semaj said that social media opens the door to another mental exhaustion.

“Social media presents an even more extreme version. Jamaica has an avalanche of social media reporters because they call themselves reporters. They’re reporting all the news, but the way they report things, they are very loose with the facts. They glorify the gore,” he told the Sunday Observer.

“Especially YouTube and to some extent, Instagram. On YouTube, persons create channels where they rebroadcast the gory details. The more of those things you consume, the more fearful you are, the more stressful you are and the more insecure you feel about the society even though the individual probability of you being impacted by it is small.”

Crime affects everyone, he added, because people feel less safe going out at night, staying out late and travelling on the road.

“All of these things become a possibility of you being a victim. It’s a part of your consciousness. So, you find that you don’t feel safe because of all of the stories you hear about, whether it is relating to you or not, whether it happens in your community or not. The fact that you’re hearing these stories day after day, it does impact your mental health. It makes you much more fearful and less comfortable,” said Semaj.

Further, he explained that this is why so many people feel like they are living in prison.

“They turn their house into a jail with all the grilles and all the security measures while it appears that the criminals are free to roam free. Research tells us that if you’re a news junkie, the more news you consume, especially television news, it’s the more you see the world as a dangerous and stressful place because you’re bombarded with these things day after day after day,’ he said, noting that people who limit the amount of news that they consume have a more peaceful existence based on the reality that crime does not affect everyone.

“But then when you consume the news, the image is given that its pure gunmen in Jamaica. Every community is under siege… that is how you feel no matter how safe your community is. You now feel a greater level of fear. It impacts the image of Jamaica both abroad and locally.”