Severe Mental trauma rampant after China earthquake
Pastor Dale Morgan
Severe Mental trauma rampant after China earthquake*
By AUDRA ANG
The Associated Press
Tuesday, May 27, 2008; 4:26 PM
DEYANG, China -- Liu Yisi sits on a hospital bed, reading a comic book.
His nose is bruised, swollen and cut, and his left arm is heavily bandaged.
While his physical injuries from China's May 12 earthquake are healing,
mental trauma has made the 13-year-old withdraw into mostly silence.
Li Fuhong, a psychology professor who voluntarily drove nearly 200 miles
to the disaster zone, speaks softly to Liu. He coaxes the boy to tell
him what happened when he escaped the ruins of his school in the city of
Mianzhu and makes him repeat these words: "The bad events are over. The
future will be better. I need to be strong."
The teenager is lucky to be getting help. Across central China's
disaster zone, many other such victims with mental trauma are going
untreated because health services are already strained.
Hospitals and clinics were destroyed along with so much else across
Sichuan province in the quake, leaving acute shortages of staff and
facilities. In the immediate aftermath, medical services have focused on
treating crushed and broken bones, amputated limbs and on preventing
disease outbreaks.
Experts warn that mental trauma could be a hidden toll for many survivors.
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."
In the past, there has been a social stigma attached to mental illness
in China. Increasingly fast-paced _ and stressful _ lifestyles stemming
from two decades of economic success have forced a greater awareness of
the problem.
Xinhua reported last year that there were 16 million mental patients in
the country but services at the grass roots level were still lacking,
and public awareness was minimal. Health officials have said that by of
the end of 2006, there were only 1,124 mental institutions, with 146,000
beds and 19,000 psychiatrists or assistant psychiatrists.
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.
Liu's mother, Zhao Xiaoxia, said the normally outgoing teen barely ate
in the days after the disaster, and could not fall sleep unless she was
holding his hand.
But the therapy by Li seems to be working.
"Now," Zhao said with a broad smile, "he wants fried chicken."
In another sign that health care professionals will not reach everybody
in need right away, the Ministry of Health has issued a handout of
guidelines on how to help survivors, rescue workers and volunteers who
have experienced the carnage. Blue flyers circulated by Sichuan health
authorities offer concern and compassion from the ruling Communist Party.
"When we're facing a disaster, the first thing we want to do is to
continue living," it said. "That's the only way we can fight the disaster."
To make up for the shortage of counselors, doctors are encouraging
survivors to look after each other, trying to create support systems in
quake-shattered communities.
In Shifang, a town surrounded by rice fields where two chemical plants
collapsed and buried more than 600 people, a steady stream of people
visited three tables lined with medicines and staffed by doctors from
the Taiwan-based Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu-Chi Foundation.
"It's different from America here. Social and familial support is strong
and it makes people feel better, safer," said Chien Sou Hsin of the
foundation. "It's a special thing."
China is officially atheist, and there were no signs apparent that
people were taking solace in religious counseling.
Basoglu, the trauma expert, and his colleagues have developed a method
for dealing with large numbers of survivors from disasters _ work that
grew from his experience after two quakes killed 19,000 people in Turkey
in 1999. The method encourages victims to confront their fears and the
simple message can be delivered through pamphlets, television or radio.
"Once they overcome their fear, all other PTSD and depression symptoms
disappear," he said.
For some, recovery seems far away.
The nights have been the hardest for retired soldier Luo Tiangui. He
flails violently in his hospital bed, eyes unblinking and shouting
incoherently. "I am a bad person," he says, over and over.
Luo, 57, was buried in his house but survived with a broken thigh and
fractured ribs. His mental state is more fragile.
Lying shirtless and sweating, Luo stared at the ceiling, murmuring "It's
on fire, it's on fire" _ one of the many hallucinations his family says
he's been suffering.
Doctors said Luo has suffered a great fright, and he's being given drugs
to help him sleep. They have told his family they should share happy
moments with him in the hope that it helps.
At his bedside, Luo's wife, Wei Yunqun, and 21-year-old daughter, Luo
Cui, stroke his hands, which did not stop trembling. The TV above his
bed is kept off so he isn't bombarded with news from the quake.
"It's too hard to bear," said Wei, 54, her eyes filling with tears as
she looked at her husband, a former construction worker and furniture-maker.
"There was never anything wrong with his mind," Cui said.