Warning about psychological impact of fear about crime situation

Psychologist Shawn Clarke has suggested that residents confining themselves to their homes because of fear about the crime situation could negatively impact their mental health and has called for action to be taken to prevent this.

Contending that Barbadians who are still reeling from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rising cost of living need to get relief through social interaction, Clarke lamented that some people were now afraid to leave their homes at night.

“When we look at socialising, that is developmental for society where we get to interact with our neighbours and our children get to interact with their peers and so on. So, it is at a stage where something needs to be done because, again, this can add additional stress to Barbadians with all the stress that they are already going through, and it can also have a mental health effect on society as well,” the founder and chief executive officer of Supreme Counselling for Personal Development said during an interview with Barbados TODAY.

As many others have expressed over the past week, on the heels of Attorney General Dale Marshall saying that Barbadians did not need to worry about the recent spike in violence because it was occurring between rival gangs, Clarke said it was natural for residents to be fearful despite assurances offered by the authorities.

He also joined the chorus of individuals calling for systems to be put in place to prevent similar acts of violence in schools when children return to the classroom on September 19.

With young people among those being charged for violent crimes including murder, the psychologist suggested one of the answers to the worrying situation is to take intervention programmes to the youth in their communities.

“If they are not coming to us then we have to find a way to go to them. We need to get back to community life. The reality is if you say to a young person ‘do not lime on the block, do not walk with a gun, do not walk with the knife’, we are not saying what we are putting in place.

“We are not saying to them ‘well, we no longer want you liming on the block but we have some attractive activities in the community centres to occupy your time’. We are not saying that ‘we do not want you on the block but we have excellent activities happening on evenings or at weekends in the secondary school or at the primary school within your area’. So we need to provide positive alternatives for our young people to be engaged in,” Clarke recommended.

He disclosed that his organisation is in the process of implementing a programme in which his team of psychologists will go into communities to teach young people about anger management, conflict resolution, and self-esteem building.

Clarke said the aim is to have these sessions on Saturday mornings, starting in October.

“We also want to decentralise our counselling services, where we will have our community counselling clinics on Saturday mornings, or at least one evening per week, where we meet with persons who are scared, persons who want to talk.

“Even if we don’t do one-on-one counselling, we are looking at doing what we call focus groups, where a group of persons can sit and talk to psychologists and get out their fears and so on and learn about coping skills. This programme is part of our Reach One Save One initiative and we are really going to be appealing to corporate Barbados very soon to assist us in making this possible,” Clarke said.

anestahenry@barbadostoday.bb