Unrecognized Damage
Damage in Myanmar (Source: IHT)
Yesterday I read an article on the aftermath of last spring cyclone in Myanmar that really touched me.
It mentioned the destruction and the more than 100,000 people dead, but it was these lines that stuck in my head:
there are the stories of wandering ghosts, whose cries for help can be heard at night in haunted places that no villager dares to enter.
Relief after being long delayed is now getting to the people, but what about their psychological needs? There is some obviously unrecognized damage there. How are they going to be fixed? Is the government or the medical system going to do it? Do they even care? Or is this something people are going to have to slow themselves?
I have a feeling that it is the latter is the solution to the problem. The same can be said of the suffers of the Sichuan earthquake. Assistance has been given to deal with the physical losses but what about the suffers’ mental problems? Maybe those who showed signs of trauma at the time, but what if the trauma didn’t surface at the time but a year from now when people wake up with constant nightmares of watching their colleagues and classmates crushed all around them?
I thought maybe that the Chinese government would invest in psychological care after the earthquake but they haven’t. But investing in care for the people of the earthquake would have a lasting effect to all the drunks, drug addicts and abused wives that fall through the cracks. Many of these people end up in jail when they could be getting help in a mental institution or maybe even better served with medication and regular outpatient care. That would be such a big savings to the Chinese government and maybe help China get closer to the socialist paradise that it has always wanted to be.
Just my two cents.
J.
