Clinical traumatologist Hanif Benjamin says the State needs to do more to help parents struggling with mental health challenges.

In an interview with Newsday on Monday, Benjamin, former head of the Children's Authority, said recent videos on social media showing children being abused speaks to the state of society.

He was commenting on charges against a San Juan woman for abusing her daughters, aged nine and three.

The woman appeared in court on Monday charged with two counts of cruelty to a child.

Benjamin said more must be done to prevent children from falling victim to the hands of perpetrators.

“Protecting our children should be our main priority and we need to question whether the nation's mental health capacity is there to fix whatever is going on with parents before children become punching bags.”

“Parents go through stress all the time and one of the challenges we face is not understanding our limitations when it comes to mental stress.”

He said that parents need to be given the tools to be able to recognise when they need to call in the troops to prevent the violent stress reactions that have gone viral across social media in the last week.

He said officials are not good at preventative measures but rather follow-up measures that are often punitive.

“For too long in Trinidad, people are at the end of the spectrum before any kind of help is given so people must be arrested or the child needs to be abused before people get any help.”

He added, “All health centres should have psychologists, social workers and mental health practitioners so in the first instance when a parent is feeling overburdened they can go there to seek help without feeling stigmatised.”

He said while he knows those in authority will say there are social workers at health centres, he was not speaking about the internal referral system.

“I am talking about when a person is feeling stressed they are able to walk in and get the help they need.”

He stressed that the lack of these preventative measures could be the reason parents react in extreme ways when their mental health is not taken care of.

“This is why we still see children ending up in plastic bags and in dumps and all these 19th-century foolishness as opposed to a situation where we could have legislation saying you could give up your child without being arrested and people feeling comfortable to do that.”

He said that all of this is part of helping with mental well-being and helping with stress so that people can come forward for help when they need to.

Benjamin also recommended that communities pay more attention to parents' struggles.

He said there is a need for wider social networks to support parents and to pay attention when they are becoming overwhelmed due to their personal lives, economic circumstances and poor mental health.

“Raising a child is difficult and so parents must be able to raise their hands and say 'I need help,' society must also be able to step up and say 'Dad is not okay or Mom is not okay.' We need the system around the