The string of outbursts of violence on transit systems across Canada and the U.S. reflects youth violence, which the World Health Organization (WHO) calls a global public health problem[1]. It includes a range of stabbings and killings of passengers on busses and subways[2]. The epidemic of mass shootings, although not usually on transit systems, is also reflective of a global health problem. It is obvious that being shot is not healthy, but for some reason related to contagious emotions related to divisiveness regarding other topics such as guns and mental illness, people rarely see this as a health problem. Instead they see is as a political problem. Let’s look at it as a health problem.
This global public health problem appears to reflect an underlying psychological issue, that being an emotional pandemic among many wayward youth. These affected youth who commit these atrocities appear to do so for underlying emotional reasons not immediately available to many observers, who reflexively call for police, prosecutors and prisons, although those are ineffective measures for a global health problem.
The WHO indicates that worldwide some 200,000 homicides occur among youth 10–29 years of age each year, which is 42% of the total number of homicides globally on an annual basis. In fact, homicide is the fourth leading cause of death in people aged 10-29 years, and 84% of these homicides involve male victims.
We have heard of horse whisperers, who according to the ehorses magazine, are “someone with the gift of correctly interpreting a horse’s body language and even reacting and responding to it accordingly.”[3] They go on to say that actual whispering has basically nothing to do with horse whispering. If you observe the non-verbal communication of horses and understand how animals communicate with each other, they say you have some good basic tools to learn the art of horse whispering. Herds of horses, especially in the wild, interact with each other exclusively through non-verbal body language. A horse whisperer understands this type of communication and uses it to train and subsequently work with horses.
If only wayward youth had the same treatment as the horses. What we need among the public are youth whisperers, who truly understand the emotional needs of youth. I am sure we have many youth whisperers in the public, usually successful parents but sometimes community leaders. Such people were usually seen in organizations such as Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, as well as many churches who have youth divisions. They still exist but are victims of contagious emotions of suspicions and cynicism, since their popularity has plummeted as seen by lowered enrollments. Scouts Canada still offers programming for between 23,000 and 33,000 children and youth, according to Wikipedia[4]. Even these figures are suspect, as they have an unusually wide range raising suspicions as to their accuracy and are subject to a cautionary note about their subjectivity in in Wikipedia. They say that Scouts Canada has declined significantly in size since its peak: youth membership is down 82% from 288,084 in 1965 and volunteer numbers are down 50% from 33,524 in 1965. The decline also carries over to the U.S., according to the Toronto Star [5] article in 2021 entitled “Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts suffer huge declines in membership.”
It is likely that emotional contagion has spread distrust, suspicion and cynicism in the public arena to their opinions of those organizations, as many of their leaders seem to have devolved into abusers and they seem not to have replaced these leaders. I am sure that this has been part of the reason for the increase in youth violence. Of course, these comments should not be taken as reflecting the character of youth today in general, since most youths are successful, helpful, well-adjusted individuals who fit well into society. And there are still many groups that help youth, such as Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada and Boys and Girls Clubs of America. [6] [7]
Nevertheless, there is a problem, as noted by the media, in the wave of youth violence we see in transit these days. When I say youth, I am including many in their 20’s, who are often delayed adolescents who have “failed to launch.” The emotional pandemic is often ignored by the journalists, and certainly ignored by the 3Ps, the police, the prosecutors and the prisons, who are often the go-to solution for many of those politicians in power. As a retired clinical psychologist, I can see that this emotional pandemic involves an acting out of emotional needs through committing acts of violence, including homicide. This involves a subconscious communication, one which says that life is worthless to the disaffected, wayward youth. Unconsciously, they seem to be expressing a need for affection and they are saying to society if you don’t care for me, then life must not be worth living. Homicides are their way of telling people that they shouldn’t be alive because life is not worth living. Of course, this is severe psychological maladjustment, perhaps a form of mental illness, such as a delusion, but nevertheless a youth whisperer may realize this and help them see it differently, especially if provided earlier in life.
Today’s youth continues to be exposed to many factors that increase their risk for addiction, academic failure and poor mental and physical health. Among those factors is family breakdown. According to the WHO, teens most at risk for severe behavioral problems are typically those who lack a stable support system at home. In addition, teens living in dysfunctional families (drug abusers, serial criminals, gang members) or in households at or below the poverty level are also at a greater risk for mental, physical and behavioral issues, which often involve violence. These all often lead to social alienation and an increased propensity for violence. Issues such as ADHD, autism, depression, anxiety, serious adjustment issues involving self-mutilation and eating disorders, alcoholism, drug abuse, are often seen among wayward youth.
For some reason, politicians are apparently blind, as many people are, to the critical, unmet psychological and emotional needs of disaffected youth. Governments ignore these issues at society’s peril. Sometimes, these issues occur at a high level. In the US, we have recently seen the arrest of a 21-year-old youth in connection with the release of important classified documents.
Police and prosecutors in Canada have stepped up their targeting of a number of people dealing with homelessness, mental health issues and addictions, not to mention acute alienation from society. However, police, prosecutors, and prisons (the 3P’s), as many citizens know, do not solve problems of unmet psychological and emotional needs of disaffected youth, unless we call prisons a novel way of providing such youth a home with a roof over their head and three square meals a day. Prisons are NOT a way to solve the problem of homelessness. This just increases the acute alienation from society.
Many politicians may delight in appealing to their base by calling this emotional epidemic among disaffected youth, a rampage of crime and chaos. They say it reflects a “woke” status, while many astute, aware citizens realize that many such politicians are “asleep”, the opposite of “woke”. When they are unaware, or asleep, they instill more of the 3P’s that actually lead to more problems. It is time for governments to “wake up” from their sleepy state. I am certain that a focus on providing more coverage for psychologists and other therapists, social workers, psychiatric nurses, mental health workers and community workers (all of whom actually save lives) would be much cheaper than building more prisons, hiring more prosecutors and more police to handle disaffected youth. When they eventually get older and are released from prison, to add to the ever increasing number of panhandlers on our streets and soon in our busses and subways, we will need even more of the 3P’s to add to the never-ending vicious cycle that contributes to the depressive, fearful state that much of society is already in.
[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/youth-violence
[2] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-death-of-bc-teenager-latest-in-string-of-violent-incidents-on-transit/
[3] https://www.ehorses.com/magazine/horse-whisperer/
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scouts_Canada
[5] https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2021/06/30/boy-scouts-girl-scouts-suffer-huge-declines-in-membership.html
[6] https://www.bgccan.com/en/
[7] https://www.bgca.org/programs