Mennonite Central Committee

Trauma counseling in the aftermath of the disaster

January 10, 2005
Mary Oxley

Mary Oxley, an MCC worker in Sri Lanka who was just finishing language study, has a background in counseling. These are excerpts from her report about a one-day trauma counseling workshop she attended on Sat. Jan. 8.

On Saturday, I attended a workshop on trauma counseling. It was organized within one week by the Sri Lankan National Counselors Association in conjunction with the Sri Lankan Foundation Institute. There were approximately 300 participants.

The overwhelming impression I was left with was the enormity of the need for this specialist counseling in the wake of this disaster.

Some of the features of this particular trauma are the huge number of bodies that will never be found making the grieving process for individuals much more protracted. It is difficult to have closure when there is no body to bury. Also, the sheer scale of the disaster means many survivors have lost most of their family members. The care given within the circle of family and friends that can so often alleviate the after affects of trauma within the first month will be absent for many.

One poignant moment during the workshop was the recounting by a counselor of the experience of one man that he had been seeing. This man was a retired fisherman living in a village near Trincomalee on the East coast. He had been having a late breakfast near the beach, when his sister-in-law yelled to him to run. He ran to the house and grabbed hold of his wife and daughter. The first wave struck as they were running and he lost hold of both his wife and daughter’s hands. He was then pinned to a barbed wire fence. Struggling to keep above water, the second wave crashed in with such a force that it literally cut the barb wired fence, releasing the man. When he eventually regained his footing and looked around him, he was surrounded by bodies. He lost his wife and his only child, a 15-year-old daughter. This man was so traumatized that he had isolated himself from the other refugees, as he couldn’t cope with seeing other wives and daughters and being reminded of his loss. The counselor feared that this man would take his own life as he felt he had nothing left to live for.

Another issue that was raised was the role of the media. The main speaker, Corsini Perera, one of the top counselors in Sri Lanka, said he felt that the repeated show of images of the disaster both on the television and in papers were potentially causing further trauma to those directly impacted by the disaster. People can be repeatedly re-traumatized by ‘revisiting’ scenes of the earlier trauma. Great sensitivity and care needs to be exercised by those involved in media work. He also said that earlier traumas can resurface if triggered by a further trauma. The trauma experienced by people in Sri Lanka during the years of conflict, could resurface following this latest trauma.

There is to be a follow-up two day training in a couple of weeks, but the number of places is restricted to 50. I have applied but because of the limitation of language, I’m not sure I will be eligible. I have however, made some useful contacts which I hope to follow up on with regards to perhaps doing some marriage counseling (which is my training). I’m told there is a big need for it here and that in general, the people who are most likely to seek counseling are likely to seek an English-speaking counselor (the use of English here is very much a status symbol). So, I will see what develops.