Clinical traumatologist Hanif EA Benjamin has urged relatives and others to take "extra precautions" and work together to avoid any further possible harm in dealing with the two children who lost their parents over the weekend.
"Right now, the priority is the children. While everybody is grieving, the children have not developed the coping mechanism to grieve the way they ought to," Benjamin told Newsday by phone on Tuesday.
"While I am empathetic and sympathetic to the adult relatives as well, they and others must take extra precautions in preventing further harm to the children."
Benjamin, the former Children's Authority chairman, was commenting on the deaths of Shaline Ramkissoon, 38, and her common-law husband Steve "Ricky" Jugmohan, 40. The couple died by suicide on Saturday at their home at La Paille Road in Princes Town.
They lived with their two children, a nine-year-old girl and a six-year-old son on the ground floor of Jugmohan’s family home. Their daughter found the bodies and alerted relatives who live on the top floor of the house.
The night before, the couple had recorded a video about what they were planning to do. The girl heard everything as she sat on a bed in the bedroom the family shared. The couple said they had money problems and expressed their love for the two children.
The girl is now staying with her mother’s parents in St John’s Village, San Fernando, while her brother is with their father’s mother.
Benjamin, a clinical therapist, told Newsday: "The relatives at this point need to come together to create a sense of safety for the children. Any kind of rift should be put to the side."
Benjamin reiterated that people need to work together for the sake of the children.
"Their safety is important, because right now, their world as they know it has been turned upside down. A level of peace and stability must be created for the children as they heal and go through the grieving process.
"That is what is seemingly most important at this point. The children need to express how they feel."
Benjamin is president and CEO of the Centre for Human Development, a full-service psychological, counselling and mental-health private practice.
Relatives said staff from the Children’s Authority met with the girl on Sunday and she saw members of the police Victim Support Unit the next day. On Tuesday, a counsellor from her school also met with her.
Benjamin expressed concern at this, saying there should be a co-ordinated effort in her therapy.
"When people are going through such a traumatic incident, having too many people coming and asking possibly the same sets of questions and talking the same set of things tends to make the survivors or victims turn off a bit. It creates a level of stress.
"So in times like these, one co-ordinated effort is the best option.
"This country lacks that, the ability to co-ordinate. That is why I keep calling for a trauma centre to be established in Trinidad and Tobago."
At such a centre, he said, a team would work together to do what they need
