Kristen Gyles | Unsound minds cannot be left to roam the streets

Jamaica is experiencing far too many fatal incidents involving persons of unsound mind. Even one case would be too many, but it is alarming how often lives are lost due to the actions of unsupervised persons who are known to be mentally unstable.

Within the past few weeks, a man suspected to be of unsound mind was run over by two vehicles in May Pen, after he stepped out into the road apparently running from another mentally ill man. Another man of unsound mind was shot and killed by police in Mandeville after allegedly throwing stones, one of which injured one of the officers. In another incident in St. Thomas, a man of unsound mind is said to have stabbed his older brother to death.

The latest? A mother brutally murdered and her daughter hospitalized after a man of unsound mind attacked them with a machete in their home in Portmore. When police went to apprehend the suspected attacker, he allegedly attacked the police with his machete and the police shot him.

Jamaica is suffering from a mental health crisis. The crisis is not simply the increase in the incidence of mental illness because the scourge of mental illness plagues numerous countries across the world. The crisis is in our collective failure as a country to adequately provide treatment options and to implement suitable containment measures for people who are clearly of unsound mind. This crisis, if left unaddressed, will only result in more injury and loss of life.

Now, let’s get to the hard part of the discussion. The burden of action cannot be left on the general public. The uncomfortable truth is that a big part of what fuels the stigma towards mental illness is systemic and institutional failure to provide treatment options for people who are of unsound mind. Every time someone deemed to be of unsound mind mows down someone with a machete, with big stones or with any other weapon, the society naturally becomes enraged and feelings of animosity, fear and outright disdain begin to fester in relation to these people. After all, it is only normal for a demographic of people seen as threatening and violent to be ostracised.

The stigma that affects those with mental illness did not spring up from nowhere. In fact, it is in some of the poorest nations that have been developing at the slowest rates that mental illness is most stigmatised.

A 2020 report done by Human Rights Watch outlined that across 60 countries, the practice of ‘shackling’ had become widespread. The report is called “Living in Chains: Shackling of People with Psychosocial Disabilities Worldwide”. Shackling broadly refers to the chaining and confinement of a person of unsound mind, usually to a specific location in a very tiny space where they cannot move. This is often done because the individual’s behaviour is so erratic and threatening that their caregivers struggle to feed them, bathe them, clothe them or simply keep watch over them.

Further, in some instances, persons who are mentally ill are targeted by community members who see them as a threat, especially where they have previously inflicted harm to members of the community. Shackling is therefore, in many cases, an amateur way of keeping the individual out of the reach of irate community members who look on them with hatred.

So, what at face value is an extremely inhumane practice towards people of unsound mind, is in many countries, the layman’s attempt to address a problem that is far bigger than themselves. This is, of course, not to say that wicked and heartless people do not also shackle mentally ill individuals for purely inhumane reasons.

The countries in which this practice is most prevalent are… you guessed it… developing nations, many of which are concentrated in Africa and the Middle East, where institutional approaches to mental illness are limited and ineffective.

Care for the mentally ill cannot be left only up to individual families and communities. Families have a responsibility to seek treatment for their unwell family members, but where an individual becomes violent and threatening, the state must intervene to keep the family and community members safe, and to rehabilitate the unwell person.

At present, the police also cannot be relied on to properly restrain and monitor the behaviour of people of unsound mind. Why? They are not necessarily trained to restrain mentally ill people who are swinging machetes. So, we will have to equip our police force with the training and tools they need to effectively disarm people of unsound mind, once they are posing harm to others.

Beyond that, the police have to take the individual somewhere, and that somewhere cannot be back home to pounce on their caregivers.

The Bellevue Hospital has been providing care and treatment for people of unsound mind for many years now. However, unless and until the Bellevue hospital has the space to accommodate all the people that need to be there for as long as they need to be there, the problem will continue.

Something is seriously wrong if almost every major thoroughfare in the corporate area has a known ‘mad’ person which motorists and pedestrians brace themselves for while travelling during the days. Something is also seriously wrong if these individuals are left to roam the streets unmonitored for weeks, months and in some cases, years, before they are taken elsewhere.

One of the greatest indicators of a nation’s development is the manner in which the most vulnerable are treated. People of unsound mind cannot be left to their own devices for extended periods on our roads. Whenever and wherever this is the case, they often eventually end up posing real harm to others and to themselves. We have to start treating the mental health crisis, like a crisis.

Kristen Gyles is a free-thinking public affairs opinionator. Send feedback to kristengyles@gmail.com and columns@gleanerjm.com