Stress, depression overwhelm tsunami survivors
June 23, 2005
Nearly six months after the tsunami swept away four of their five children, Indian fisherman Kolandavelu and his wife Lakshmi moved out of their government shelter and into a palm frond hut by the sea.
But their first night back on the coast was a disaster as the overwhelming sense of loss came back.
"We got up at midnight and went back to sleep in the (government-built) shack," said 38-year-old Kolandavelu. "We lost four children and I don't think we can ever overcome that."
The tsunami left nearly 230,000 dead or missing from Indonesia to Somalia. But millions more still living have been traumatised, some of them permanently.
Rebuilding shelters and providing food is much easier than healing the mental wounds, experts say.
"People have started realising that their loss is permanent," said Dr K. Sekar, a community psychiatrist at India's National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS). "Two groups are very severely affected, women and adolescent girls."
When Reuters first spoke to Lakshmi just after the disaster, she refused to believe that 12-year-old Sukanya, Gunasheelan, 7, Guna, 5, and Subhash, 2, were dead, buried in a mass grave.
Three months later, the tragedy had sunk in and the depressed, frail woman had stopped eating and was in hospital.
Now housework keeps her busy and she takes most comfort from her 10-year-old daughter Saranya, who was saved by an aunt.
"But if I am not doing anything the memories return and sometimes I break down crying," she said, sitting on the beach.
Thailand's Department of Mental Health says 10,000 to 15,000 people are suffering tsunami-related emotional problems.
Last month it opened a mental health recovery centre at Khao Lak in Phang Nga province, the hardest-hit area where most of Thailand's 5,395 deaths occurred.
"It's the epicentre of the tsunami. We found that a lot of people still suffer from post-traumatic stress, depression and many kinds of mental problems," said the department's director general Somchai Chakrabhand.
Three mobile teams of four to five pyschologists visit 20 temporary camps in the region, counselling villagers. The teams are also training local health workers and volunteers so the community "can care for its own people", Somchai said.
But in other badly affected countries such as Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India, professional help is hard to find.
In a remote temporary camp at Sri Lanka's northern tip, housewife Viyarseeli Nadarajahlingam copes with the loss of her six children alone, living among strangers.
The 32-year-old is deeply embittered and constantly locked in shouting matches with her new neighbours.
"Just imagine how it is to lead such a lonely life!" said Nadarajahlingam, who tried to kill herself after her children drowned in front of her eyes.
She had a hysterectomy just before the tsunami, so all she can do now is pray that her husband makes good on a pledge to find a child to adopt to help her move on.
"My husband told me: 'You spend the whole time crying and grumbling, saying you don't have children. OK, I'll bring a child for you.' He has to bring a child. He will bring one."
In India's worst affected district of Nagapattinam, men have hit the bottle in a big way and alcoholism is touching dangerous levels, experts and voluntary groups said.
"Before the tsunami our de-addiction hospital got five or six patients a month," said M. Krishnakumar of Avvai Village Welfare Society, a Nagapattinam voluntary group.
"Now the 15-bed hospital is full and more are coming. It has become like a general hospital," he said.
Around 600,000 tsunami survivors in India are living in camps or temporary shelters, and Sekar said the poor living conditions amplify the survivors' distress.
India may have an edge in dealing with the crisis, however, thanks to the experience it gained after two major earthquakes and two severe cyclones hit the country since the 1990s.
When 3,500 were killed by a gas leak from a pesticide plant in Bhopal in 1984, survivors did not have access to any mental health counselling.
Today, there are 4,000 trained volunteers working with tsunami survivors on the coastline of Tamil Nadu -- but almost none on its remote Andaman and Nicobar islands where thousands of people died.
The scale of the problem is daunting, says Sekar, who heads a government programme for the psycho-social rehabilitation of survivors and is proposing a five-year community mental health plan for New Delhi's approval.
"The actual challenge starts now," he said. "The needs are changing and the (daily) life issues are different, and this is the hardest time in terms of rehabilitation and rebuilding."
In the Indonesian province of Aceh, 168,000 people are listed as dead or missing from the tsunami. Lhok Kruet town, 100 km south of the capital Banda Aceh, was completely destroyed.
Principal Saiful Amri, 39, was head of the makeshift school there. He said the school now had 81 registered pupils, down from 205 before, reflecting the tsunami's terrible toll. Nevertheless, the children were doing better than adults, he said.
"The kids feel safe. They are not like adults, they are not worried about the water. They are already going out there again to catch crabs. They are not like adults who think too much."
Source: Reuters, 23/06/2005