Editorial | Of mental health and bravery

There should be a greater takeaway from Michala Virgo’s story, published in this newspaper on Monday, than one mother’s concern for her daughter’s well-being and her wish to keep the young girl’s dream alive.

The bigger issue is the post-pandemic mental health of Jamaica’s children, which many people fear is a deep and quiet crisis.

Michala Virgo, 15, is a gymnast. She has been in the sport since she was four. She has done well at it. Recently, Michala won two individual medals at a tournament in Florida. But for most of the last two years, she was out of competition because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

There is something else about those two years. Michala became ill. She suffered from depression, apparently induced – at least in part – by the isolation of the pandemic, her father’s illness, and the diminution of the emotional and other support he provided. Michala withdrew. She found excuses for not training.

There was more.

“It happened that I stumbled on a note and was shocked to see what my daughter wrote in that note,” the child’s mother, Jacqueline Powell, told The Gleaner. “That is why I decided I have to get close to my daughter. I have to do what I have to do to save my child.”

Happily, Michala is now well enough for her medal-winning performances at that Florida competition. During her competitive lay-off she even designed a leotard, which she hopes to market. We hope she is successful in the venture.

But whatever happens for Michala, either as athlete and entrepreneur, by allowing her story to be told (we assume after a wrenching family discussion), she has performed an act of extraordinary bravery and importance. She ought to be proud. Jamaica should be grateful.

TALK ABOUT IN WHISPERS

Mental health is one of those things that families usually talk about in whispers, although, by some estimates, it will at some point affect up to 40 per cent of Jamaicans. Often, the fact that children are among these numbers is overlooked. It receives too little attention.

But as this newspaper has previously reported, and Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CaPRI) noted in a 2018 situation analysis on the state of Jamaica’s children, in 2016 over 3,000 children and adolescents were treated at public clinics for psychiatric disorders.

Further, a 2014 study showed that up to 20 per cent of high-school students harboured ideas of suicide, with girls (64 per cent) at greater risk. Among the at-risk children, those in the 14-16 age range faced greater danger. Nearly 52 per cent had thoughts of suicide. With respect to actual suicide attempts, 42 per cent of all the people treated in Jamaica’s public hospitals in 2016 were children.

There is no readily available data on the state of the mental health of Jamaican children since the onset of COVID-19. But the healthcare specialists have said that, like with the rest of the world, the problem would have been exacerbated by the pandemic, as families were pushed into poverty, schools closed, and children forced to stay at home. The changed environment, as UNICEF put it in the 2021 State of the Children report, robbed children “of the everyday joy of playing with friends”.

It is significant that Michala marked her recent return to face-to-face classes, and interacting with friends, as a positive development. “I couldn’t focus on online classes,” she said. “I just couldn’t do it.”

LACK OF SUPPORT

Unfortunately, many of the children who returned to school after the hiatus of two years did not have the family support like Michala Virgo. Many are likely to be suffering from depression, anxiety and other forms of mental challenges. In many cases no one noticed. Or the signs were ignored. Or the children berated for their symptoms. Some would have been told to snap out of their funk.

So, for a large number of these students, the structured environment of school is the best, and most likely, place to get initial help. Put another way, the challenge for the Jamaican authorities is not only to make up for the learning loss with respect to the curriculum. Children are also returning with social and emotional problems, which may manifest in aggression and violence. Or, it may be depressive withdrawal or other symptoms of mental health disorders.

A week ago, we urged that the efforts to catch up on the curriculum be supported by mental health interventions – by having a phalanx of psychiatrists, sociologists, guidance counsellors and social support volunteers in the schools.

We raised the issue then in the context of violence in schools. The issue now may not be violence. It is, nonetheless, the flip side of the same social upheaval, exacerbated by societal dysfunction. They mostly require the same tools.