St Ann's no place for minors

JANELLE DE SOUZA

There is a separate ward for minors at the St Ann’s Psychiatric Hospital but it is filled with patients who live there, long-term patients like those with cerebral palsy. Therefore, when new minors are brought to the hospital, they are placed with the general population.

Referring to the report of a 14-year-old boy being raped by another patient in the hospital bathroom, a St Ann’s worker said it was not the first time sexual abuse happened between patients. Unfortunately, he said, society, the police, or the government did not put anything in place to ensure such things would not happen again.

He said just because a person was mentally ill, it did not mean they were not capable of knowing right or wrong. The patient could still be held liable for the act, so too could the State for not protecting the child. He added that St Ann’s was not a place where children should mix with adults, but if it were necessary, there should be a better monitoring system.

Unfortunately, he said that could be a problem as nurses may say they were short staffed. However, these deficiencies had serious effects on the boy who already suffered from Prader-Willi Syndrome and previous physical and sexual abuse.

“All these implications of getting STDs, the psychological stress, and so forth, will now have to be dealt with. He has to be tested for HIV three months down the line. That’s more psychological trauma for that child.”

The case of the 14-year-old boy arose on October 12 when High Court judge Justice Avason Quinlan-Williams ordered he be removed from St Ann’s where he had been for a year. The next day, he was placed in the care of the Children’s Authority at its child support centre after former attorney general Anand Ramlogan filed a suit on October 9 to have the court grant an interim relief to the mother to have the boy removed from St Ann’s. The boy was also to be physically and mentally assessed by a team of doctors. The boy had been sent to to St Ann’s from St Michael’s Home for Boys where he had also been sexually abused by staff and other boys.

The St Ann’s worker suggested that children be taken to the Eric Williams Medical Science Complex in Mt Hope for psychological evaluation as it had a psychiatric department, and be housed by the Children’s Authority. He said it would be a better place to have children assessed to avoid the stigma of being in St Ann’s.

He also suggested that the wards in St Ann’s be refurbished and expanded, and possibly more buildings built for counselling, rehabilitation, disputes between parents and children, and other services for children. “There is so much land there. Build a good ward there where these children could go for assessment, start occupational therapy and all these things.” Dr Margaret Nakhid-Chatoor, president-elect of the TT Association of Psychologists, believed children and adult patients should never be mixed at St Ann’s.

Instead, she said the country needed homes and institutions with provisions for children with specific mental health issues. Just as there were homes for the blind or physically handicapped, she believed children needed a peaceful space to rehabilitate and recuperate.

She recalled the times she would volunteer at St Ann’s hospital as a teenager, and told a story of a boy, who seemed to be about five-years-old, who had just been admitted to St Ann’s because there was no room at an orphanage.

“He was a very happy, cheerful, laughing little fellow. I remember I returned to visit in three or four weeks and it was as if he was in a vegetative state, possibly imitating the behaviour of the other children.”

She said that experience was one of the reasons she went into psychology and studied how environment influenced behaviour.

Speaking specifically about the 14-year-old boy, Nakhid-Chatoor said there was a disconnect in moving him from St Michael’s Home for Boys, an environment that was already predisposed to abuse of all kinds because of a lack of training and development of the staff, into a mental health institute where the patients were not properly supervised. She said it showed that the government did not believe that children’s mental well-being was important.

“Unfortunately our country looks at the output, the contribution to the economy and neglect anything else... There is a lack of attention to issues like these from all stakeholders involved in mental health. Secondly... more and more, we do not attend to children. They are a minority in our country but they are our most important asset but they continue to be disposed of in this kind of callous way.”

She said many children were affected by domestic violence, bullying, and even financial issues. She said adults in society were traumatised by the economy and when children hear their parents venting their frustrations, the children were affected.

She said the country lacked vision for children’s mental health, and for the training and development of staff because many places want the cheapest service. She said government needed to realise that mental health did not only affect adults and the older the child gets, the more serious the issue becomes.