Growing up in Jamaica, it was a settled principle that every community had its resident ‘mad man’. The mentally challenged lived among us and were clothed and fed by the community and protected by the majority.
Where we lived, our ‘man’ was Winkie. He frequented the public spaces and carried on with antics that were specific to him. We children were terrified of him, but the adults assured that he was harmless and ensured that his basic health needs were met.
In those days, Jamaica could depend on churches and communities to rally around the vulnerable and protect them even from themselves.
Although the mentally challenged have always been a part of our communities, it appears that their involvement in violent activities has increased significantly in recent years.
Over the past decade, there have been several reports of mentally challenged persons killing children and even entire families.
Last December, a brutal triple murder occurred in the fishing community of Frazersfield, Rocky Point, Clarendon, where a mentally challenged man allegedly used a machete to kill his mother, brother, and cousin. Only last week, a 10-week-old baby boy, Mateo Forbes, was found dead in a bucket of water at his home in Top Hill, Manchester. His mother, who is said to be mentally challenged, is accused of the killing.
It is reasonable to assume that for every two Jamaicans you meet on the streets or in your community, one of them is likely to be of unsound mind but was never properly diagnosed.
That assumption is based on a comprehensive study of the Jamaican population done just over seven years ago by the late Professor Frederick Hickling. He found that 41 per cent of the population was eligible for a mental disorder diagnosis. Additionally, Hickling concluded that more than a third of the population suffered from a form of mental disorder or had suffered from it at some stage in their life.
While the well-respected Professor Hickling departed this life in 2020, recent happenings on the island would suggest that he was ahead of his time and may have been extremely conservative in his well-considered analysis.
When a five-month-old baby was flung from the third storey of a concrete residence in the Barrett Town community in St James a few years ago, it shook the nation to its core. The child, it is alleged, was used as a weapon in a war between its parents.
Only weeks before this heartbreaking incident, the nation was enraged when a 30-second video clip emerged of a young woman engaged in a fight with another woman while holding a baby before slamming the child onto the hard road surface. The woman seen in the video appeared to be using the child to ward off the blows being thrown at her by her opponent.
After throwing the baby down, she quickly grabbed the child by its clothing with one hand, picked up an object with the other, and the two resumed their close-quarters combat, all the time with the young child dangling between them.
Mental illness could be the explanation for this dreadful level of wrath against the most innocent. Too often, children conceived in unstable unions become the victims of mothers who may be suffering from extreme cases of postpartum depression or other forms of mental challenges, with no immediate help accessible.
Research indicates that violent behaviour among the mentally challenged is often not a result of the mental shortcoming itself but rather a communicative or reactive response to frustration, discomfort, pain, or an inability to cope with environmental demands.
There is no doubt that the breakdown of families, churches and community support structures increases stress levels and worsens the circumstances for the vulnerable, including the mentally challenged. The absence of these crucial pillars gives way to some of the deadly outcomes we have been witnessing. It also points to the magnitude of the curse which has been unleashed on the island.
In a cursed nation, unsound minds are a dime a dozen, and in many cases, it is the result of the rejection of righteousness. Some of it may be genetic, but a large chunk of it is Satanic and the outcome of drug abuse.
Even on school compounds, some children who could be suffering from mental challenges are never assessed or diagnosed and are left to their own devices. No one can be sure if high-stressed learning environments, with no familial, spiritual or mental support, could be triggering some of the violence that has been unfolding among students.
Persons of unsound mind also find themselves in government, where they appear to be mentally well, but their psychosis results in unrighteous pronouncements, the passage of inhumane laws, despotic dealings, nepotism, sexual immorality and the clandestine endorsement of corruption.
When people do not glorify God, their hearts darken, and they lose their ability to think right, and in stressful situations they will engage in unspeakable evil against others, even their own children.
Nature hates a vacuum, and when Christ is rejected, essentially the red carpet is laid out in the mind for the entry and dominion of the enemy, whose mission is always to steal, kill and destroy.
Unless Jamaica repents and returns to the way of the righteous, rebuilds families, revives churches and strengthens our communities, we will continue to see wanton wickedness unleashing before our very eyes.
This is the epitome of madness!
