Violence is traumatizing Haitian children. Now the country is breaking a taboo on mental health services

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Students often vomit or wet themselves when gunshots erupt outside the school in northern Port-au-Prince.

When this happens, the school principal, Roseline Ceragui Louis, discovers that there is only one way to try to calm the children and keep them safe: make them lie down on the classroom floor while she sings softly.

“You can’t work in that environment,” she said. “It’s catastrophic. They are traumatized.”

Haiti’s capital is under attack by powerful gangs who control 80% of the city.

On February 29, gangs launched coordinated attacks targeting critical infrastructure. The attacks left more than 2,500 people dead or injured in the first three months of the year. Now, in a bid to help save Haiti’s younger generation, the country is undertaking a broader effort to dispel a long-standing taboo about seeking therapy and talking about mental health.

At a recent training session in a relatively safe area of ​​Port-au-Prince, parents learned games to put a smile on their children’s faces. Parents are often so distraught and discouraged that they don’t have the energy to care for their children, said Yasmine Déroche, who trains adults to help children overcome trauma inflicted by persistent gang violence.

Gunmen set fire to police stations, stormed Haiti’s two largest prisons to free more than 4,000 prisoners and shot up the country’s main international airport, which closed on March 4 and has not yet reopened. The violence also paralyzed Haiti’s largest seaport.

Meanwhile, around 900 schools closed, affecting around 200,000 children.

“We must fight this social inequality so that all children, all young people, can have the same opportunities to go to school, to work, to earn a living,” said Chrislie Luca, president of the nonprofit Hearts for Change Organization for Deprived. Children of Haiti. “These are all problems that have led us to where we are today, with the country on the brink.”

UNICEF’s representative in Haiti said the violence has displaced more than 360,000 people, most of them women and children. Furthermore, at least a third of the 10,000 victims of sexual violence last year were children, said Bruno Maes.

“Children are left to fend for themselves, without assistance, without sufficient protection,” he said.

More than 80 children were killed or injured between January and March, a 55% increase from the last quarter of 2023 and “the most violent period for children in the country on record”, said Save the Children, a non-profit organization from the USA.

Luca said the injured included two boys shot in the head while walking to school and an 8-year-old girl who was playing inside her home when she was hit by a bullet that hit her intestines, requiring emergency surgery.

“We are witnessing a lot of mental health issues,” Maes said. “This violence is traumatizing.”

Louis said his 10-year-old son cried daily “You’re going to die!” while she was heading to school, and the violence prevented the boy from eating, sleeping or playing.

Louis remained resolute, knowing she needed to be strong for him and his students.

“My heart is broken, but my students see my smile every day,” she said.

Still, many fell asleep in class, unable to concentrate after sleepless nights punctuated by gunshots.

Others had more important things on their mind.

“It’s hard to concentrate on school or playing a game when the rest of your body is worried about whether your mom and dad will be alive when you get home from school,” said Steve Gross, founder of the American nonprofit Life. is the Bom Playmaker Project.

Some students are increasingly drawn into gangs, carrying heavy weapons as they charge drivers for safe passage through gang territory.

“The children are traumatized and agitated,” said Nixon Elmeus, a teacher whose school closed in January. He recalled how his best student stopped talking after a gang encounter. Other students become violent: “Since the war started, the children themselves have acted as if they were part of a gang.”

Gèrye Jwa Playmakers, a Haitian partner nonprofit that aims to help children, held a training session for teachers that Louis attended after gang violence forced the closure of his school in March. She learned which games were best to distract students from the violence outside the school gates.

“How can I recapture these children?” she asked.

With hundreds of schools closed, online courses are for those who can afford Wi-Fi and a generator. Most Haitians often live in the dark due to chronic power cuts.

Without school, with high poverty and traumas such as having to avoid mutilated bodies on the streets, children became easy prey. Between 30% and 50% of armed group members are now children, Maes noted.

“This is a very sad reality,” he said.

A 24-year-old man who gave only his surname, Nornile, for security reasons, said he had been in a gang for five years.

He said he joined because the gang gave him the money he needed and provided more food than his mother, a saleswoman, and father, a bricklayer, could offer him and his seven siblings.

At night, he worked as a security guard for the gang leader. During the day, he ran errands and bought food, clothes, sandals and other goods. Nornile said he was proud that the gang trusted him, but he thought about giving up when one of his three brothers was killed by gangs on June 16, 2022.

“Men in the ghetto don’t fight for education or a hospital. They fight for territory,” he said. “They only care about themselves.”

Nornile left the gang two years after his brother’s death and began working for Luca’s non-profit organization.

“The reality of the gang is that the person can carry a gun, but in their mind that’s not what they really want,” Nornile said.

Jean Guerson Sanon, co-founder and executive director of Gèrye Jwa Playmakers, highlighted the importance of parents interacting with their children on a daily basis to improve their mental health.

“Sometimes that’s all we have,” he said, noting that conversations about mental health remain largely taboo.

“If you go to a psychologist, it’s because you’re ‘crazy,’ and ‘crazy’ people are really discriminated against in Haiti,” he said.

At training on a recent Sunday, parents learned games for their children. One was mirroring the other person; another pretended that an inflatable ball was a piece of cheese that the child, pretending to be a mouse, had to steal.

At the end of the training, the parents laughed as they invented different dance moves in a large circle, yet another way of playing with their children.

When asked to draw what a safe space meant to them, several of them drew houses; some drew flowers; and one of them, Guirlaine Reveil, drew a picture of a man with a gun as he approached a police station – a real-life scenario that occurred a few years ago.

One parent, Celestin Roosvelt, said he tells his children, ages 2 and 3, that gunshots are not a bad thing, a lie he considers necessary.

“You have to find a way to live in your own country,” he said, shrugging apologetically.

At the end of the training, parents received a copy of the presentation, crayons and an inflatable ball.

Déroche, who runs the program, has observed how parents feel so overwhelmed that they become disconnected from their children’s needs.

“I know that the crisis we are experiencing right now will have consequences that will take I don’t know how many years to resolve,” she said.