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Trauma help for tsunami victims
04/01/2005 21:57 - (SA)
Geneva - The "tsunami generation" of children who survived devastation along the Indian Ocean already are receiving makeshift help to cope with the psychological trauma of losing parents, brothers or sisters, but aid agencies say they and other victims will need special attention for years to come.
Relief workers are preparing psychological support for children and adult survivors as well as for aid workers overwhelmed by the enormity of the tragedy, officials said on Tuesday.
"The trauma is unimaginable," said Wivina Belmonte, Geneva spokeswoman for the UN Children's Fund, Unicef.
"It's horrific for us sitting in comfortable living rooms watching these horrendous pictures come across TV screens. For kids to have lived this, to have hung on to a parent, maybe to have lost the parent's grasp, maybe to have lost the parent altogether - this is something they have to deal with for the next years."
Needs of volunteers
Janet Rodenburg, who heads the reference centre for psychological support of the international Red Cross, said efforts are already underway to provide counseling, but that other needs have pushed mental health to the background.
Red Cross specialists have gone to Indonesia and Sri Lanka to see what needs to be done, Rodenburg said in a telephone interview from Copenhagen, Denmark.
"They are also looking at the needs of the volunteers, who are working around the clock and who apparently are getting exhausted, irritated, burned out," Rodenburg said.
The Red Cross hopes to start debriefing volunteers and staff, "making it possible for them to air their feelings, their experiences of the day, which of course have been horrible", she said.
"But of course it's very chaotic," Rodenburg added.
The World Health Organisation is also sending a team this week to Indonesia to study psychological needs, said spokesperson Fadela Chaib. WHO's own staff in the area are "actors and victims at the same time", she added.
Psychological support for staff
The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs is preparing for the psychological support of its staff.
"We already know that some of them are not really coping with the situation," said spokesperson Elisabeth Byrs.
Many Western tour operators have been sending counselors to help returning tourists on flights back. The British, Finnish and American Red Cross societies also have dispatched psychological support teams either to help tourists from their areas or to train local Red Cross workers, said Rodenburg.
"What the delegates are trying to do now is to inform the public about the very normal reactions to these things that have happened," through leaflets or broadcast spots.
"It's very normal to have problems sleeping and it's very normal that you are irritated," Rodenburg said.
Many of the Asian Red Cross societies lack psychological support staff and it isn't clear how effective those that exist are, she said.
Small things
Still, Rodenburg said, "there are so many small things that could be done in the beginning, for example making sure that there is light at the toilets at night so women feel safe".
Another small step would be providing underwear for women, who have been wearing the same clothes ever since the tsunami hit.
Belmonte said the best thing to do for children now is to get them back to school.
"And things don't have to be perfect. There don't have to be lights and four walls and a roof, necessarily, but just get them somewhere safe, where they're with other young children, children that they know, and get some kind of routine that was familiar with them from pre-tsunami back up and running. That's really important."
Some bereaved families have found their own way to provide psychological support, Unicef's Belmonte said, for instance by putting out food for missing children so that surviving siblings feel there is still hope.
"They don't want to acknowledge the death yet," she said.
- AP
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