The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : `Relief workers themselves can provide counselling'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jan 09, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

`Relief workers themselves can provide counselling'

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI, JAN. 8. The Bhopal gas tragedy. The Orissa cyclone. The Gujarat earthquake. The coastal tsunami. Comparable disasters.

Focussing on the "Indian experience with disaster and mental health," Nimesh G. Desai of the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences, New Delhi, today said research showed that survivors did not need the professional services of psychiatrists as much as they needed counselling by relief workers.

Dr. Desai drew from his research work in Kutch and said "Communities and populations can and do take care of their emotional and psychological needs with their own resources to a considerable extent." He was speaking at a sensitisation programme for mental health professionals organised by the Department of Health and Family Welfare and the Indian Psychiatric Society at the Institute of Mental Health here.

"The mental health service needs of the affected population can be served by relief and rescue workers," he said. A sensitisation programme of this kind was not organised in Gujarat. "If psychological help can merge with other relief work, it is more effective."

Dr. Desai said only a small per cent of the population in the Kutch suffered from long-term psychiatric problems. "Only a small team of psychiatric specialists is required," he said. Nearly 90 per cent of the population recovered within a month or six weeks.

"Now we sit and talk together after Sabanaben made us discuss the sharing with the group. She also told us to talk about our household activities. We spend more time on that only, as we were doing earlier at Naroda. Really, it makes us happy to sit and talk about each other." — Gujarat riots survivor.

This was a slide R. Thara of SCARF put up during the programme. Taking a leaf out of the successful rehabilitation of Gujarat riots survivors, she said, women should be encouraged to form groups to help themselves.

Dr. Thara said the role of community helpers was to listen actively and show empathy. She explained the normal reaction to the disaster — "initial fear, anger and sadness followed by a denial stage, and unbidden thoughts of the event troubling the survivor." But the survivor would eventually work it through, she said.

An "abnormal reaction," however, was a sense of being overwhelmed by the disaster, followed by feelings of panic and the survivor then got into drugs and alcohol abuse, she said.

Psychologist Lakshmi Ravikanth of The Banyan voiced an absolute "no-no": "People do not want to go to counselling tents." She said psychological support could come from teachers and local workers.

Problems of children

Child psychiatrist V. Jayanthini zeroed in on the problems of children. "Children who have lost their peer group and siblings are more affected than children who have lost their parents," she said. Reactions varied according to ages.

She recommended that children be sent to school at the earliest. School was a place where their minds would be diverted and where they could meet their peers. It would remove them from the scene of the disaster and rehabilitation work.

Also present at the inauguration of the programme were the Health Secretary, N. Sundaradevan; the Director, Institute of Mental Health, M. Murugappan; president-elect of the Indian Psychiatric society, S. Nambi, and senior health professionals.

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