Alcohol abuse, a lack of emotional self-regulation and listening skills are the top social causes of gender-based violence and suicides in Namibia.
This is according to a therapist from Swakopmund, Marcella Katjijova, who has urged the public to prioritise mental health care.
At a Gender Based Violence survivors walk in Swakopmund, therapist Marcella Katjijova argued that alcohol and drug abuse fuel violence in relationships.
She says this is because people relax their guard and speak their minds, sometimes in very ugly ways.
She notes that men are not the only perpetrators of violence, because women also abuse men. "One of the challenges is that women tend to have a very great quality of expressing how they feel because society has taught us to actually express our feelings and emotions. Yet the opposite is true for guys, and the only way they do express their emotions is by actually acting them out. We don't teach our boys or men how to regulate their emotions. We don't teach our young men and boys how to communicate their feelings, which leads to what we're seeing now: gender-based violence, with men being more aggressive towards what we call 'the weaker sex'."
The psychologist has urged women and men to communicate better and not to use unpleasant words that may result in aggression or suicide.
"So we really need to do better in self-regulation and that's why we have psycho-social support with the ministry of labour, with the ministry of health, with the ministry of gender and also private specialists out there that try and communicate with the public about how to regulate emotions, how to speak better, how to communicate and, most importantly, how to listen. And if you come to a conversation with an answer, that already puts the other person in a negative space because they have to defend themselves, and aggression builds from that," she advised.
Last week, three men were reported to have committed suicide, allegedly after arguing with their partners.
About 700 suicides were recorded between January 2021 and May 2022 nationally.
Of those, close to 600 are men.