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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Trauma deluge follows flood fury -Tapas Chakraborty

Trauma deluge follows flood fury -Tapas Chakraborty

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published Published on Jul 4, 2013   modified Modified on Jul 4, 2013
-The Telegraph


Lucknow: Schoolchildren near Badrinath doodled tidal waves, broken houses and carcasses when asked recently to draw whatever they wanted.

A health worker in the same district recalled a mother going repeatedly to the bank of a pond near her home in search of her two children feared dead 15 days ago.

Another woman says she is having nightmares about being "engulfed by tidal waves any time" since losing her husband and 13-year-old son a fortnight ago.

These findings and more are what a team from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences (Nimhans), Bangalore, has come across after speaking to survivors of last month's Uttarakhand floods. The aim was to assess post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). One way to do that was to talk. Another, as in the case of the kids, was to get them to draw.

The experiences confirm what officials of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), which led the rescue and relief along with the army and several other agencies, had feared: the mental health effects of the disaster could be widespread and long-lasting.

Doctors advising the NDMA had warned the "behavioural consequences" could be "debilitating and long term", including a possible spurt in suicides.

NDMA vice-chairman Shashidhar Reddy had said last week that he had invited psychiatrists to the villages to gauge "post-calamity trauma" among the survivors who have come through one of the worst disasters in the country in recent years.

The nine-member Nimhans team in Badrinath is part of the NDMA initiative, now working among the people in Badrinath's Pandukeswar, Hanuman Chatti, Govindghat and other affected villages.

"While dealing with psychological impacts, we are adhering to guidelines on support and mental health services laid down by the NDMA," Dr Mathew Varghese, the head of the psychiatry at Nimhans, said over phone from Bangalore.

The NDMA guidelines focus on " a wide range of psychosocial and mental health problems" arising in the aftermath of disasters with the aim of "helping individuals, families and groups rebuild human capacities and restore social cohesion".

Some of the counsellors speak to children and women, helping them open up on what they feel about the future and the way ahead, while others in the team record statements.

"We are telling those stressed that you are heroes because you survived. You need to talk," a doctor in the Nimhans said from Badrinath, almost echoing the "Even Heroes need to talk" approach adopted by psychiatrists after the 9\11 attack in the US.

Sources in Badrinath said over 80 women were being provided with counselling that would continue for the next three months.


The Telegraph, 3 July, 2013, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130704/jsp/nation/story_17079725.jsp#.UdUMeKzcjco


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