The seminar entitled “Mental health problems in earthquake survivors: an evidence-based approach”, was organised by the Post Graduate Medical Institute (PGMI) of Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) on Wednesday.
“It is all the more important that we fulfil basic needs of the people, who survived the devastating earthquake of October 8,” said Dr Saeed Farooq, head of the psychiatry department, LRH.
He said that people who had survived the killer earthquake were most likely to develop PTSD after the passage of one month. “We can minimise the chances of psychiatric disorders in the quake-affected population by offering relief goods with respect,” he said.
“Standing in long queues and getting relief stuff lowers the dignity of the recipients in the eyes of the public. There should be a decent way of delivering aid to the people in the affected areas,” Dr Farooq added.
He said that they had planned to impart training to volunteers, paramedics and doctors serving in the quake-hit areas, so they could deal with the quake-survivors in a decent way.
About 80 per cent of the people had some psychological problems in the society due to their exposure to horrors, such as deaths, accidents, natural calamities, tsunami, etc, he said. About 30-40 per cent of those who survived the earthquake would develop psychological problems in the worst-hit areas, because most of them had lost their near and dear ones.
Dr Javid Akhtar, senior registrar of the department of psychiatry at LRH, said the condition of survivors usually started to deteriorate a week after the quake and after a month they would probably develop psychological disorders.
He said the PTSD was a difficult phase for quake victims, which usually starts once they recover from physical injuries and begin recalling their horrible memories.
He said the survival of guilt was a common condition in which a person stopped thinking about saving the lives of their family members.
He said that such patients often became aggressive and denied recognizing their family members.
In the PTSD, Dr Akhtar said the patient recalled the incident due to the loss of his or her senses. He said that in the second stage called the inventory stage well-defined psychiatry disorders had been reported. This stage, he said, may continue for a long period. The patients feel haunted by memories of their relatives, whom they had lost during the devastation. Such a condition may trigger suicidal tendencies, he said.
Dr Akhtar said that sometimes survivors feel pain and lose belief in self and God. He said that aggressive behaviour, alcoholism, illicit drug abuse and deliberate self-harm were the reactions of these patients.
Psychiatrist Dr Shujaat Ali Khan said that two of their colleagues from the LRH had left for the Azad Kashmir town of Bagh to train aid workers. They would return after a week and would present their findings, he said.
Dr Zahid Nazar, a local psychiatrist, said that a base camp would be established at the Ayub Teaching hospital in Abbottabad to provide much-needed training to relief workers in Hazara division.
Dr Fawad Khan said that it was high time that medical professionals indulged in relief activities in the affected parts of the country and identified the high-risk individuals and provided them prompt treatment.
Although all the people may not need treatment, he said, they should avoid medicalizing the miseries. “We should just focus on our behaviour and think about the way in which we are going to respond to the needs of the quake victims,” he said.