Violence is a product of our society

Aug 24, 2015 Letters

Dear Editor,
Since 2009, I’ve been on the ground assessing the social crisis here in Guyana and in 2011, I began working in the community as a Community Mental Health Practitioner. I became involved in the following actives:
(a) Psychotherapy counseling. (b) Facilitating Self- Esteem Group Therapy in various communities in Regions 4 and 10.
I facilitated two courses on mental health at the Institute of Distance and Continuing Education (IDCE), and at Critchlow Labour College.
Presently, I continue to facilitate these courses in collaboration with Adult Education Association (AEA).
For a brief period I taught at the University of Guyana in the Social Science Department.
And, in 2014 I found and launched “Women’s Refuge”, a (pilot) therapeutic emergency shelter programme for homeless single parent women who are perpetuators of child abuse; and whose children are in the care of the State. Often these children are never returned to the care of these single parent women whose mental health, substance abuse, and domestic violence relationships issues were never dealt with. This underscores the extent of the impact of the absence of a viable mental health care programme in Guyana. The State is yet to engage our organisation on this most needed pilot programme.
I mentioned these activities to give readers an idea of my background, so that they can better appreciate my hypothesis I argued in my letter “Inadequate Interventions” or “Domestic Violence Intervention Should Be Guided by Evidence-Based Data”.
My hypothesis is supported by four and a half years of data collected by me personally, since there wasn’t data available that would guide any meaningful intervention to address the social crisis which challenge communities on a daily basis. The following are some of my findings:
In my daily practice, 95 percent of the clients are of African descent
At the secondary-intermediary level, 98 percent of the students I taught were of African descent
At the tertiary (UG) level, again 98 percent of the students were of African descent.
When I attended forums and workshops, which discussed social issues, I observed that the majority of the audience were persons of African descent. I also observed that even when an Indian Activist took to the national stage on social issues such as suicide, again more than 80 percent of the audience were of African descent.
My observations suggest that there is a predominant African interest in social and mental health issues, this points to the need to encourage professionals from other ethnic communities to get involved in this area. Given the ethnic makeup of Guyana, this is an essential requirement when addressing the social crisis being played out in our communities at the national level.
As a nation now conscious of its mental health crisis, we seem to be rushing to restructure social policy to deal with this crisis in the absence of available and reliable data. As I pointed out in my earlier letter is the wrong approach.
For example, a significant percentage of children born and raised in Indian communities are of mixed heritage.
My data is pointing to a societal re-assignment of this mixed group to the African communities by late adolescence. So, at the level of social policy, we must address the special needs of this group. I am insisting that we have to develop intervention models: for Africans, Amerindians, and Indians when addressing social issues such as suicide, intergenerational incest, and alcoholism, etc.
We also have to study the role and function that religion plays with respect to the individual within his/her cultural reality.
As we seek to develop a national vision of social cohesion in our multi-ethnic society, our failure to learn from the short comings of the past, which includes the first fifteen years of the 21stcentury, will be a disservice to our nation.
I close by saying that the alarming incidence of violence in the country is only the tip of the iceberg – violence in our society is a product of the society.
Ingrid Goodman, MSW, ABA, CSME
Executive Director
PATOIS/Women’s Refuge

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