An inmate with known mental health challenges allegedly stabbed a prison officer at His Majesty’s Prison in Balsam Ghut on Sunday, leaving both the officer and the inmate nursing stab wounds, officials confirmed on Monday.
Superintendent of Prison Jay Kendall said the attack was swiftly contained by staff, who used “appropriate and measured force” to de-escalate the situation. Both the injured officer and inmate were treated at Dr. D. Orlando Smith Hospital and discharged the same day.
Kendall commended the swift response of prison staff, emphasizing their role in maintaining security while managing inmates with complex needs. He also highlighted the broader challenges of addressing mental health in custodial settings.
Over the past eighteen months, the prison has collaborated with the Ministry of Health and Social Development and the Governor’s Office to enhance security and rehabilitation efforts, including improved officer training, mental health awareness programs, and upgraded protective equipment.
While progress has been made, Kendall acknowledged the need for continued improvements. “Mental health remains a key priority,” he said. “We are committed to strengthening interventions and improving overall inmate management to ensure both safety and rehabilitation.”
Mental health is not a new phenomenon in the VI. It has been with us since the bondage era, and has continued along many paths since.
Some, as in many known and personal case, of the most afflicted minds, the suffering began in childhood triggered by some of the most pernicious, but respectable folk in society in one’s childhood.
Over time, not much was known about the affliction, and even less to this day, beyond office dwellers and lip service, is being done, and on the scale that it needs to be tackled come to grip with.
Two of the greatest afflictions that is affecting our society since emancipation are mental illness due to modernizing stresses and chronic addiction of all types.
Sadly, they are all hidden away, not talked about or admitted neither in the medical, Sociological, psychological or in the medical field.
The silence and illiterateness that mental health is shrouded in in our time is mind boggling being a wealthy nation with sufficient to spare for huge parties.
Our society, during the unfortunate times of folk such as Ms. Orienia, Ning and others all suffered chronic neglect and lack of medical intervention.
Hence, the time has now come for very serious upgrades in actions, programs and facilities to begin to alleviate the pains and silent sufferings of thousands right here in Tola. The notion of masking such a prolific disease with mere masking medications is outdated to almost insane. Along with public education, we should begin to do better.
And, the same holds true today who are or have suffered from the illiterate moralistic stigmatization of modern mental illness often that manifest it self through visible repetitive compulsive disorders such as alcohol, soft and hard cocaine, gambling, sugars and others.
Mental illnesses is a major psychological problem in our society, but only the symptoms have and are being treated.
Therefore, government and medical institutions are yet to catch up with authentic treatments, care and healing for the afflicted. My life would have attained a much more favorable trajectory if such practices and thinking were in place.
Let us begin doing it for the next generation.
Before we discuss the perpetrators problems
Kendall passing the buck.