Basil Jarrett | This is not mental illness. This is who we’ve become

THE INK had barely dried on last week’s column when more news of tragedy, erupting from the shooting death of 21-year-old school teacher, D’Johnnay Graham, came crashing into the headlines, confirming once again, that it is our love affair with violence that is the root cause of most of these incidents.

As if the nation hadn’t already been shaken by the murder of the young lady, allegedly at the hands of her police boyfriend, we then learned that two people, relatives of the alleged killer, were gunned down at her Nine Night vigil a week later. If ever we needed violent example of the point that was being made last week, this was it.

A DEEPER DISEASE

D’Johnnay’s death was not a one-off case of mental illness. It was a symptom of a deeper disease. A cultural addiction to violence as dispute resolution and an epidemic of rage wearing the mask of justice against disrespect. Now ask yourself this: will we also label the killers at the vigil as suffering from a mental health crisis?

Because if we don’t, if we stop short of assigning their actions to untreated depression, undiagnosed trauma, or a nervous breakdown, then we owe the same reconsideration to the events of June 25. Maybe what we’re dealing with isn’t a mental health crisis at all. Maybe it’s a Jamaican problem, one in which guns, knives, beatings and blood are the tools we instinctively reach for when emotion outweighs logic, ego and pride are bruised, and grief demands vengeance, as per last week. Maybe.

But it is far easier for us to wrap every murder-suicide in the catch-all of mental illness, thereby avoiding the difficult questions that the alternative to that theory forces us to confront.

Now let’s be clear: In no way am I saying mental illness doesn’t play a role in some of these cases. Of course it does. But it is intellectually lazy and dangerously convenient to assume that every romantic tragedy must be the result of a psychiatric condition.

THE TOUGH QUESTIONS

Why? Because if we blame the brain, then we avoid blaming the society that raised the owner of said brain. We avoid looking in the mirror and avoid the much harder question of why do we Jamaicans solve so many of our problems with violence?

Let’s say, as theorised, that the killer who struck at D’Johnnay’s vigil was out for revenge, having viewed his victims as connected to the alleged killer and simply wanted to settle a score. As illogical and irrational as this is, why are we not saying that this too is mental illness, driven by overwhelming grief and emotion? Where was the hotline number at the bottom of the story asking persons to seek help? Where was the quote from the consultant psychologist about “red flags” and the urgent call for men to seek therapy. Instead, what we got was the usual police line that “anyone with information should contact the nearest police station”. In other words, this wasn’t framed as a tragedy of the mind. It was framed as crime.

And that distinction is crucial.

THE REAL ANSWERS

It’s crucial because how we frame the problem shapes how we respond to it. If we keep assuming that all murder-suicides are just the unfortunate side effects of untreated mental illness, we’ll keep proposing solutions that don’t go far enough. We’ll set up suicide hotlines and launch awareness campaigns and talk about men needing to open up more, which, again, are all good and necessary things.

But they are not sufficient.

We need to talk about how our boys and our men are socialised. About how we teach them from young that “manhood” is about control, dominance, and aggression. We need to talk about how so many men still treat women like property, something to own, and worse, something to destroy if it betrays us.

Or maybe, just maybe, we need to go even further back and ask some really hard questions about relationships themselves. Because part of the problem isn’t just how men react to conflict, it’s sort of what we’ve come to expect and demand from women.

ABOUT OWNERSHIP AND CONTROL

Why do so many of us, men and women alike, treat romantic relationships like contracts of ownership? Why does infidelity trigger such rage and violence? Is it biology? Ego? Culture? And is it time for us, as a society, to revisit our concept of relationships in a modern world where temptation lurks conveniently in your DMs and jealousy prowls ominously in every relationship?

To be clear, this is not advocacy for polyamory, free love or whatever young people call it these days. Rather, it is a call for us to stop pretending that the structures we inherited centuries and generations ago, many of them built on control, ownership and pride, still serve us today. More than anything, we need to unlearn the idea that violence is a legitimate form of expression and that rage makes you a man. Tough questions indeed.

So here we are, two weeks after our latest murder-suicide/attempted suicide. One young teacher is dead, her alleged killer is in a hospital bed, and two more lives have been cut short at a Nine Night that should have been a space for healing. It’s not mental health, Jamaica. At least, not only. It’s our relationship with violence and our refusal to confront what we’ve normalised.

And until we face that, no hotline or helpline will save us.

Major Basil Jarrett is the director of communications at the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA) and crisis communications consultant. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Threads @IamBasilJarrett and linkedin.com/in/basiljarrett. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com