THE escalating social violence being played out in our communities is unprecedented in the country’s modern history. The way to begin to address this problem is via the holding of a focused public discussion, which will examine all aspects of this debilitating problem.

I am a community mental health practitioner. Since 2010 I’ve been paying keen attention to the horrifying tales of violent behaviours – domestic abuse, interpersonal violence, rape, incest, child abuse, abandonment, road fatalities and suicide just to name a few – which pervade the society and which have been reported in the local media.
The records will show that generations of families are overwhelmed and traumatised on a daily basis by these repeated occurrences of violence. There are instances when families have moved from tragedy to tragedy without any respite.
While it is true that the issue of domestic violence has been debated at length, both at the community and national levels, it is important to note that the recommended interventions have had little or no meaningful impact. The violence continues to escalate, with no end in sight.
In 2011, I began a systemic investigation to better understand the phenomenon. I am aware that if in my professional capacity I wish to contribute to nation-building, collecting and accessing data will help me to better understand the challenges surrounding the issues and allow me to make meaningful proposals for their resolutions. It is out of my developed sense that data was not readily available in the relevant institutions to support any hypothesis and guide future psychotherapeutic interventions at the community level, that I moved to put in place a system of collecting and analysing data which has helped me to arrive at an objective assessment of the problems.
I soon realised that intervention models that were currently being used failed to achieve the desired results, because to a large extent, this model is too general.
Guyana is a multi-ethnic society and no single-model approach will meet the needs of all. It is not too late for us to seriously change our approach to these nation-building challenges. With a new Government, we should have a new approach to deal with these social challenges.
Guyana should introduce pilot programmes which directly address the more challenging psychosocial issues that have for a long time negatively impacted our communities.

Any meaningful bio psychosocial-educational intervention at the community level must take into consideration the individual, family and group mental health, substance abuse and domestic violence relationship issues simultaneously and should be guided by evidence-based data which is culturally sensitive to the community under investigation.

At an agreed period, evaluations should be done to determine the effectiveness of the model used. As it relates to foreign-driven programmes, while they are welcome at this time, these interventions are usually inadequate as they do not have a germane, organic connection with the community.
In addition to the above, NGOs and Faith-Based community leaders who engage in direct-service delivery must be re-trained with information and skills which address the challenges communities are confronted with on a daily basis. Our communities have an abundance of committed persons with well and good intentions using 19th Century techniques in the 21st Century. A diligent effort must be conducted in this early stage of our new administration to address these challenges along the lines suggested above.
Mr. Editor, I’ll close on this note: for some time now faced with the growing social crisis, our policy makers have displayed a strong dependency to turn to external expertise to address this crisis. While there can be some benefits in this approach, over dependency on foreign personnel to the exclusion of local resources-human and organisational- will both in the short and long term be counterproductive. I will continue this aspect of my observation in another letter.

INGRID GOODMAN
Executive Director,
PATOIS…WOMENS’ REFUGE