REPORTS

Quarterly Report of IPTP Activities.
January to April, 2006

Report of IPTP Visits
Sehar Hasan, Clinical Psychologist

Report of  Visit to Earthquake Hit Areas

3rd International Congress of Association of International Womens Mental Health

ARTICLES

USE of Media-Radio and Cable TV in Earthquake Areas of NWFP.
Haider Husain: Post-graduate in Psychiatry

Experience with children. Z. Meher Hasan, Senior Clinical Psychologist

Impressions of 4th Visit to Earthquake Hit Areas

Experience with Children
Z. Meher Hasan, Senior Clinical Psychologist

I visited Balakot for the first time a third visit for the rest of the IPTP members. They had seen the conditions in the initial stages, what they described was emotionally overwhelming, from seared mountains to the completely flattened houses and buildings.Six months had gone since and much has happened, rows and rows of camps are the first signs of re organization, but the total disorganization and total destruction of infrastructure and all the social and economic support system is evident even to casual visitor.

As a psychologist who as involved with children, I was deeply concerned with our programmers with children on the previous visit IPTP team ran play group with children in several camps with great success. Teachers were trained to carry out exercises which would help children relax as they are continuing all their activities in the same environment in which they had faced the disaster. Everything around them is a consequently a source of continue anxiety.

Adults both parents, care takers and teachers must learn to recognize and identify anxiety and learn preventive techniques. IPTP programmers conducted with teacher and children had both of these components. Group games and group activities were particularly useful as smaller number of trained people could reach out to more people.We were taken aback when a male teacher, we were training remarked that children do not feel and remember as much as adults so their trauma could not be as much.

Destitute Women with their Children in Ar-Rasheed Trust and Shelter home (Mansehra)

Unfortunately in-depth and follow up studies with sufficient data is not possible from these areas, although both in enormity and extent the destruction can be considered more disastrous than Katrina where the figures are coming out that in children 27% displayed symptoms of trauma including, nightmares, flashbacks heightened anxiety, bed wetting another study concludes that Katrina victims more then twice as likely to have behavioral and conduct problems, the same was figures of depression and anxiety.How the children respond and the severity of the reactions varies widely, depending on their ages or experiences.In teenagers depression is more common, like adults where they are capable of understanding and comprehending the present situation and losses.

In our study with young adults in their teens and early twenties we did come across a lot of depression and anxiety and loss of interest and involvement. Younger children experience of post traumatic disasters id different, they might regress, become more clinging to parents. Anna Freud study during Blitz in London has pointed to many factors during the trauma that are important such as separation from the trusted adult and behavior of the adult.

If the adult is cool and calm the child is less traumatized.Our experiences,with earthquake traumatized children were, some individual cases of completely paralyzed children, unable to sleep, severely depressed, refusing to attend school were individually treated the child had seen the father injured and later died in hospital in her presence. She had flashback, fearful, depressed, agitated some of the children with not so severe reactions were given psychological first aid.

Mother with two Surviving Children.