Treating mental trauma a daunting task
Updated: 2008-05-28 09:40
The government says the quake may have killed more than 80,000 people, leaving many more to deal with the deaths of loved ones. Millions have had their homes shattered and their lives thrown into turmoil. No government estimate of people needing psychological help has been released, although the state-run Legal Daily newspaper quoted an expert as saying they could number as high as 600,000.
Teams of psychologists, psychiatrists and volunteer counselors like Li Fuhong have gone to the hardest-hit areas, where mental health professionals have been swamped.
"China has been struggling to help thousands of people distressed and traumatized in the unprecedented earthquake that ravaged many parts of Sichuan," the official Xinhua News Agency said last week. "Many volunteers and experts have rushed to quake zones but psychologists are still in great demand."
Hospitals left standing by the quake have been overrun with serious injuries. The government has rushed more than 10,000 doctors or nurses to the area and a dozen field hospitals have been erected, Health Ministry spokesman Sun Jiahai said Tuesday in Beijing.
Signs of mental and emotional strain are widespread.
Relatives, weeping inconsolably, fall to the ground in front of plastic-wrapped bodies of sons and daughters killed in a school collapse in Hanwang. In the town of Beichuan, so badly damaged that it has been abandoned, villagers stare blankly in shock at what used to be their homes. Some talk with gratitude about having escaped with their lives -- only to dissolve into tears.
Metin Basoglu, head of trauma studies at London's Institute of Psychiatry at King's College and the director of the Istanbul Center for Behavior Research and Therapy in Turkey, said 80 percent of the survivors could be expected to suffer short-term effects of post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition that can develop after a person is exposed to a terrifying event in which physical harm has either occurred or was threatened.
Half will have longer-term problems, which include obsession with the trauma, nightmares, flashbacks, emotional numbing, loss of interest in life, irritability, memory problems and hyper-vigilance -- a state of constant alertness.
"Fear is the most serious problem," Basoglu said. "Many people will find that their fear of earthquakes interferes with their everyday activities," including sleeping, bathing -- even walking into a building.
In the Deyang City No. 1 People's Hospital, the scene was chaotic last week as doctors and nurses rushed from one injured person to the next as they lay on beds cramming hallways and in tents on the hospital grounds. Away from the hubbub, Li -- the counselor from Southwest University in Chongqing -- talked quietly with the teenager, Liu.
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