Car­o­line C Rav­el­lo

Hav­ing the pas­sion and in­vesti­ture in both ends of the spec­trum, I con­tin­ue to ex­plore the dis­course on child­hood ad­ver­si­ty as it presents in adult ill­ness­es of mind and body. I'm pur­su­ing it in the hope of rais­ing aware­ness of abuse, pro­vok­ing in­quiry, or prompt­ing pre­ven­tion ini­tia­tives for our chil­dren, based on the preva­lence of lat­er-life psy­choses at­trib­uted to ear­ly-life trau­ma.

Re­search points to sex­u­al trau­ma as the lead­ing ear­ly-life in­flu­ence in adult men­tal health di­ag­noses. Glob­al­ly, the sta­tis­tics show greater per­cent­ages of abuse in women, but this may be skewed be­cause men are more un­like­ly to re­port abuse or seek in­ter­ven­tion.

Sex­u­al abuse af­fects every­one�all ages, races, so­cial stand­ing, and both gen­ders. Men are vic­tims too. I con­sid­er that it took decades to ex­pose the Catholic Church's glob­al sex­u­al abuse scan­dal, where 80 per cent of the vic­tims were boys.

I con­sid­er what the sta­tis­tics would be if we–men and women, boys and girls–were all equal­ly "lib­er­at­ed" to talk about our ex­pe­ri­ences/trau­mas. And that in T&T, we still most­ly re­flect sex­u­al abuse as a mat­ter against fe­males and still be­have as if it's bad man­ners to broach the top­ic. It takes ex­treme dis­tress to get us talk­ing (about any­thing).

Fol­low­ing the death by stran­gu­la­tion of Japan­ese pan play­er Asa­mi Na­gakiya last week, I have high­light­ed some of what was ex­pressed on/about abuse.

Un­known: "I played mas for the first time this year. Ear­ly on Mon­day a guy from J'Ou­vert pinned me against a fence. I had to use all my strength to free my­self. I cried a lot last night. A lot of us women are walk­ing around with the his­to­ry of as­sault and abuse. We smile be­cause we think that we don't want to de­press every­one around us. We don't talk about it... I've been abused. I've nev­er told any­one."

AM: "Do you know how dif­fi­cult it is to get po­lice in­volved in do­mes­tic is­sues. For years I've lived next to a cou­ple who abused the crap out of their son and I take good cuss and threat for speak­ing up about it and to this day I'm still wait­ing for so­cial ser­vices and the po­lice to vis­it. Let's protest that."

AS: "We have pow­er we don't un­der­stand–if you as a woman ac­cept vi­o­lence at the start of a re­la­tion­ship, then that's how it's go­ing to con­tin­ue–for you and your chil­dren. It leads to so many dam­aged peo­ple walk­ing around, both male and fe­male. For change to hap­pen, we have to start with our young boys–mod­i­fy­ing be­hav­iour­al pat­terns at home, of vi­o­lence, threats and lan­guage."

AB: "No one stands up for the re­al is­sues. Why aren't we fo­cus­ing on what re­al­ly hap­pened to this young woman and the large num­ber of women and chil­dren go­ing miss­ing every day...Let's band to­geth­er and deal with the re­al is­sue."

AS: "These peo­ple who keep preach­ing to girls about their con­duct and man­ner of dress to keep them from be­ing at­tacked don't re­alise that they are at the same time plant­i­ng seeds of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion in the minds of boys that there are ex­cus­es that can be made for be­ing abu­sive...Telling girls that their at­tire can en­cour­age rape is sub­lim­i­nal­ly telling boys they can be en­cour­aged to rape."

This is a su­per­fi­cial out­take from the avalanche of ex­pres­sions, and in the mi­lieu, there was this ex­change, which begged us to go deep­er:

MB wrote: "It is un­for­tu­nate that our fo­cus af­ter such an in­ci­dent is on a fool­ish com­ment, rather than on a fact that I have been lament­ing on for as long as I have been in the men­tal health pro­fes­sion, which is that we have a crit­i­cal men­tal health prob­lem in our so­ci­ety. I ap­plaud com­pa­nies and ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions who take this is­sue se­ri­ous­ly and put sup­port sys­tems in place for their em­ploy­ees and stu­dents, but on a na­tion­al lev­el more needs to be done. Mon­ey is scarce­ly in­vest­ed in this area and the pro­fes­sion­als who know how to make a dif­fer­ence, ig­nored. So to­day, de­void of all the emo­tion, I pray for the peo­ple of this na­tion, who feel that they form part of a "new nor­mal" to recog­nise that they need help and there is no em­bar­rass­ment in seek­ing as­sis­tance when one feels un­bal­anced.

EJ replied: "Y'all (sic) as a so­ci­ety have failed in this de­part­ment. Failed in trau­ma-in­formed care, failed in cog­ni­tive be­hav­iour­al ther­a­py, be­hav­iour­al ther­a­py, play ther­a­py, art ther­a­py, psy­choe­d­u­ca­tion, cri­sis in­ter­ven­tion, psy­cho­analy­sis and the list goes on.

"Worst with di­ag­no­sis. Y'all have a bunch of chil­dren run­ning around with ad­just­ment dis­or­ders, at­ten­tion deficit hy­per­ac­tiv­i­ty dis­or­der, op­po­si­tion de­fi­ant dis­or­der, con­duct dis­or­der, post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der and do­ing noth­ing about it for decades and then when so­ciopaths come about this so­ci­ety be­haves as if it hap­pened out of thin air. Ac­cept that there is a prob­lem.

"Grow­ing up on Dun­don­ald Hill and ed­u­ca­tion pro­vide me with enough ev­i­dence to say the ma­jor­i­ty of Trinida­di­ans are ex­treme­ly dys­func­tion­al and need men­tal as­sis­tance as soon as pos­si­ble."