Fighting the trauma

Psychological trauma from an earthquake can be even more disastrous than the devastation itself.

More than six months after the Wenchuan earthquake that claimed more than 80,000 lives, many survivors are still struggling to come to terms with the damage the quake had caused to their lives and with the loss of their loved ones.

Last weekend a man was reported to have killed his wife and then taken his own life.

That the couple was found dead in a close embrace makes the tragedy even more poignant. It certainly speaks of the happy life they had lived together.

The man was a carpenter and his wife a tailor, both locally well known for their good craftsmanship. They had been a happy couple before the earthquake, according to neighbors and their relatives.

Theirs is not the first suicide case among quake survivors.

Dong Yufei, director of the agricultural department in Beichuan county government, hanged himself early this month.

Dong did a good job in rescuing more than 100 residents when his county was almost leveled by the quake, but his son was buried under the collapsed school building.

They did not give in to the earthquake. But they seemed unable to overcome the trauma into which the earthquake plunged their lives. .

According to experts, half a year after a natural disaster comes the time when the number of people suffering from psychological problems dramatically increases among survivors.

Many psychologists rushed to the quake-affected areas to provide emotional help to victims and their families. Once their total number soared to more than 2,000.

However, psychological intervention needs to be a prolonged affair, especially for those who have to live under the shadow of an unexpected natural disaster.

This is because the wounds run deep and can lay dormant for some time before they start to affect the normal life of a patient.

This is particularly true for earthquake survivors because they cannot spare enough time thinking about their own problems while they were preoccupied with the immediate worries of rescue and survival.

Once they have time to sit back and think about the good life that has been devastated and of their loved ones killed, the pain surges back.

The man who killed his wife and then himself was said to have been emotionally broken by the damage the quake caused to his new house. He turned quite jittery and talked, often to himself, about the loss of hope for a new life.

The total number of quake survivors with different degrees of psychological problems is estimated to be around 18 million. Only a little over 100 psychologists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Red Cross Society are working there. Obviously, many more are needed to help the survivors tackle their problems.

The quake survivors need warm clothes to help them survive the coming cold season. But they will badly need organized psychological intervention for many seasons beyond this winter.

(China Daily 11/19/2008 page8)