An­na-Lisa Paul

Men­tal health ex­perts in T&T say they are con­cerned about the in­crease in sui­ci­dal ten­den­cies among young chil­dren lo­cal­ly due to ad­verse ef­fects cre­at­ed by the COVID-19 lock­down.

Sec­re­tary of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Psy­chi­a­trists of T&T Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh yes­ter­day claimed sui­cide was now the sec­ond high­est cause of death in chil­dren aged 15 to 29.

His re­marks came af­ter a med­ical pro­fes­sion­al at­tached to a pub­lic clin­ic in Port-of-Spain ex­pressed alarm af­ter an in­crease in “sui­cide in­ten­tion” had been ob­served in many young peo­ple at­tend­ing the fa­cil­i­ty, which caters to per­sons on the low­er end of the eco­nom­ic scale.

The doc­tor said the pat­tern ob­served in youths over the past sev­er­al months in­clud­ed ag­gres­sive be­hav­iour and at­ti­tude changes; in­creased anx­i­ety; school­ing/ed­u­ca­tion­al dif­fi­cul­ties; fam­i­lies where rel­a­tives re­mained in­car­cer­at­ed and those whose rel­a­tives at home were sub­stance abusers.

An­oth­er med­ical of­fi­cial who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty re­port­ed, “In my prac­tice, I am see­ing a lot of per­sons with sleep dis­tur­bances and eat­ing dis­or­ders...these are all signs of de­pres­sion man­i­fest­ing it­self phys­i­cal­ly.”

He said in his younger clients, he had found chil­dren be­hav­ing peev­ish or be­com­ing ex­treme­ly ir­ri­tat­ed quick­ly, re­fus­ing to calm down, dis­play­ing tem­per tantrums and some even stopped eat­ing and sleep­ing.

The two ex­perts said al­though the lock­down had im­pact­ed adults and chil­dren in dif­fer­ent ways, par­ents had an over­ar­ch­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect their chil­dren from the ad­di­tion­al stress­es it may have brought and not trans­mit that to the child.

Con­firm­ing youth sui­cide was al­so now a glob­al trend, Deyals­ingh said de­pres­sion is nor­mal­ly the first in­di­ca­tor some­thing is wrong with an in­di­vid­ual. Con­flict, tur­moil, ag­i­ta­tion, anx­i­ety and/or abuse in all the forms, in­clud­ing phys­i­cal, sex­u­al and emo­tion­al and do­mes­tic vi­o­lence are all trig­gers.

Asked what could be caus­ing sui­ci­dal thoughts in chil­dren now, Deyals­ingh said, “Some of them would have their prob­lems and the par­ents do not even know what is both­er­ing them. It is not like long ago where chil­dren were made to go to church where they would have been ex­posed to spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and all it en­tails...that sup­port from ex­tend­ed rel­a­tives...that is lack­ing now in many in­stances.”

Deyals­ingh urged par­ents to recog­nise chang­ing be­hav­iours and at­ti­tudes, as he warned, “A child who is usu­al­ly qui­et who is sud­den­ly act­ing ag­gres­sive and loud...or a child who was loud be­fore who is now qui­et and with­drawn...that is what you have look for.”

Adding that ex­am pres­sures, re­la­tion­ship is­sues and bul­ly­ing were al­so fac­tors that lead to de­pres­sion, Deyals­ingh said, “We are see­ing younger and younger chil­dren killing them­selves now, and we al­so have to be care­ful as there can be copy­cats who will see what is hap­pen­ing and fig­ure this is their way out. There are chil­dren who are im­pul­sive and vex with their par­ents for one rea­son or an­oth­er and they can just run out in front of a car.”

Not­ing schools had been closed since the first lock­down in March, Deyals­ingh said, “Even though we were ap­pre­hen­sive be­fore COVID-19, we are much more con­cerned now be­cause of the stress as­so­ci­at­ed with this man­i­fest­ing in both adults and chil­dren who have had to ad­just to be­ing at home.

“It is more dif­fi­cult now and cou­pled with the eco­nom­ic strain of those who have lost their jobs or suf­fered a loss in salary...the par­ents them­selves are dis­play­ing anx­i­ety and de­pres­sion.”

He said this was a dou­ble-edged sword.

“You are now ask­ing some­one who is al­ready un­der­go­ing emo­tion­al dis­tress to look out for emo­tion­al stress in their chil­dren and it is a catch-22 sit­u­a­tion.”

Deyals­ingh said when schools are func­tion­al - teach­ers, so­cial work­ers and guid­ance of­fi­cers are usu­al­ly the first to pick up on such is­sues, as they recog­nise de­pres­sion and abuse among chil­dren. But with home-school­ing in ef­fect un­til De­cem­ber, he said ed­u­ca­tion­al ad­min­is­tra­tors need to find a way to reach their stu­dents to de­ter­mine their emo­tion­al, men­tal and phys­i­cal well-be­ing. He sug­gest­ed a ques­tion­naire or an on­line in­ter­view by a guid­ance of­fi­cer and fol­low­ing from the child’s re­sponse, they could alert au­thor­i­ties on if fol­low-up ac­tion was nec­es­sary.

“We are get­ting more prob­lems in the home with the lock­down and there is more do­mes­tic and child abuse,” Deyals­ingh said, adding these were un­usu­al times re­quir­ing unique ac­tion.

Mean­while, Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent An­to­nia Tekah-De Fre­itas said dis­cus­sions re­lat­ing to this wor­ry­ing trend are need­ed with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to en­sure im­me­di­ate ac­tion can be tak­en to as­sist per­sons, es­pe­cial­ly those at the pri­ma­ry lev­el.

She said cer­tain sit­u­a­tions ex­ist­ed be­fore COVID-19 but ad­mit­ted they had not re­ceived re­ports of sui­ci­dal cas­es in­volv­ing stu­dents.

“I guess now it is more preva­lent and more no­tice­able,” Tekah-De Fre­itas said.

Tekah-De Fre­itas said while home might not have been the best or safest place for some chil­dren pri­or to COVID-19, the virus had forced the au­thor­i­ties to take ac­tions to keep the pop­u­la­tion safe.

In her 2020/2021 Bud­get con­tri­bu­tion in the Par­lia­ment on Mon­day, Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Gen­der and Child Af­fairs Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy said over 4,000 cas­es of child abuse had been re­port­ed to the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty in 2019. She said a large per­cent­age of those cas­es were al­so of a sex­u­al na­ture.

Web­ster-Roy al­so ex­pressed alarm over the num­ber of calls made to the do­mes­tic vi­o­lence hot­line 800-SAVE, say­ing dur­ing the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 2019 to Au­gust 2020, a to­tal of 11,298 calls had been re­ceived.