This is another article from Bokee about the ongoing mental health counseling work going on in China for survivors of the Wenchuan earthquake. The article describes how some aid workers are somewhat baffled and disappointed by the behavior of the survivors they are working with. In general, they keep seeming to want things, to make almost unreasonable demands for things. The experts are saying that this is because they lost so much in the earthquake and are now in the phase of wanting to be “compensated”, so they make demands of people, telling them to do this and that (including dumping their urine, making them food, and washing their clothes). Some of the victims that have been in therapy are not even willing to leave the clinics and hospitals, even though they are, for the most part, OK—the experts say this means they are still afraid of facing reality, which means they are not in fact completely OK.
I think the healing process is going to be different for each person, and I certainly pity them, because each one has a lot of struggling with demons to do. Technorati Tags: earthquake, wenchuan, mental health, PTSD, therapy, counseling, aid, relief, hospital, trauma, pain, Chinese
