Mogs
17th April 2011, 09:01
How Japan will survive psychological fallout of crisis
12:21 15 April 2011 by Ferris Jabr
Stoicism helps (Image: KeystoneUSA-ZUMA/Rex)
Eventually the debris will be cleared, the radiation will fade and the nearly 200,000 people in temporary shelters will find new homes. But memory of the most powerful earthquake to strike Japan in recorded history, the devastating tsunami that followed and the worst nuclear emergency since Chernobyl will persist. The most enduring consequence of the ongoing crisis in Japan will not be medical, financial or environmental: it will be psychological.
Barbara Lopes-Cardozo remembers the screaming. One of the founding members of Doctors Without Borders, she was in Colombia in 1985 just after the Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupted, killing more than 23,000 people. She administered anaesthesia to those who survived, some of whom shrieked and howled from the terror of flashbacks.
The experience helped convinced her to focus her career on mental healthcare in emergencies and disasters. "I think it has been a mistake in the past not to focus on mental health," she says.
K.!?$A.!?$S.!?$Wickrama of Iowa State University in Ames, who studied survivors of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, agrees. "Recovery of physical infrastructure is one thing ? but recovery should also focus on psychological processes, on the social infrastructure."
http://www.newscientist.com/mobile/article/dn20385
12:21 15 April 2011 by Ferris Jabr
Stoicism helps (Image: KeystoneUSA-ZUMA/Rex)
Eventually the debris will be cleared, the radiation will fade and the nearly 200,000 people in temporary shelters will find new homes. But memory of the most powerful earthquake to strike Japan in recorded history, the devastating tsunami that followed and the worst nuclear emergency since Chernobyl will persist. The most enduring consequence of the ongoing crisis in Japan will not be medical, financial or environmental: it will be psychological.
Barbara Lopes-Cardozo remembers the screaming. One of the founding members of Doctors Without Borders, she was in Colombia in 1985 just after the Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupted, killing more than 23,000 people. She administered anaesthesia to those who survived, some of whom shrieked and howled from the terror of flashbacks.
The experience helped convinced her to focus her career on mental healthcare in emergencies and disasters. "I think it has been a mistake in the past not to focus on mental health," she says.
K.!?$A.!?$S.!?$Wickrama of Iowa State University in Ames, who studied survivors of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, agrees. "Recovery of physical infrastructure is one thing ? but recovery should also focus on psychological processes, on the social infrastructure."
http://www.newscientist.com/mobile/article/dn20385