Benjamin: Children self-harming in TT alarming

CHILDREN’S Authority chairman Hanif Benjamin has described the issue of non-suicidal self-harm among children in this country as “alarming.”

“It is something I don’t think we are paying a lot of attention to.” He said the suicide rate among men is also alarming and the question was how to reach them. Benjamin, a psychologist, was speaking on Sunday at the launch of #NotOkay and Project R.A.R.E. Invisible Scars...PTSD Examined campaign held at University of Trinidad and Tobago’s O’Meara Campus.

He said the types of self-harm included cutting (cuts or severe scratches with a sharp object) and hair-pulling to elicit pain. “It means that our children and our young persons are suffering. I think we are not paying attention to our children the way we ought to.”

Benjamin said he frequently tells people to determine the baseline behaviour of a child and what is normal. He said when a parent or teacher notices the child acting above or below that baseline, they should ask what is going on and get them help.

“But the challenge is that we are not speaking to our children the way we ought to. We are not understanding their baselines. And more importantly we are not allowing the young people the voice to come to us to say, ‘Hey I feel this way. This is affecting me.’”

He said most times young people do not know how to verbalise their emotions in a way an adult would understand and many times they communicate through either their emotion or their behaviour.

“But unfortunately, because of the punitive way of society, we take it as ‘bad-behaved children.’ And I am saying the time has come where we must stop and examine why a child’s emotion is the way it is, why their behaviour is the way it is, why they have moved from the baseline above or below.”

He said once this begins to be done parents or teachers will be able to notice things before the situation reaches a point of no return.

He said attention should especially be paid to children during the period from childhood to adolescence, when entering a new school or doing CXC. On the campaign, Benjamin said TT is a “traumatised nation,” but mental health was a hidden issue. “Mental health should not be a secret. It should not be a taboo subject.”