Experts evaluatingthe traumas and coping methodsthat occur after earthquakes and natural disasters state that the most lost emotion in major disasters such as earthquakes is the sense of trust. Stating that earthquake victims experience severe feelings of terror, fear and panic, experts emphasized that earthquake victims need empathy the most during this period.
Stating that earthquakes and natural disasters have traumatic effects on people, Psychiatry Specialist Prof. Dr. Nesrin Dilbaz underlined that the mental state of earthquake victims must be addressed.
Things Not to Say to Earthquake Victims
Noting that earthquake victims need empathy the most, Prof. Dr. Nesrin Dilbaz said: "First of all, we need to show and tell them that we understand their pain. We need to tell them that we feel how much they are suffering and how much sadness they feel.
What we should never say are words like 'It's okay, you are alive'. These words actually make people feel more guilty. They feel worse or sentences like 'It's okay, everything will pass', 'You will start again'. In this period, people don't have any thoughts about starting again. They are trying to survive, they are trying to exist, they are starving but they don't feel their hunger. This is what happens during periods of acute stress."
How to Talk to an Earthquake Victim?
Stating that earthquake victims should be treated empathetically, Dilbaz said, "We need to show and tell them that we understand their pain. We need to tell them that we feel how much they are suffering and how much sadness they feel. What we should never say is 'It's okay, you're alive, that's what matters'. These words actually make people feel more guilty," he warned.
Stating that the mental state of earthquake victims should be addressed in the current period, Prof. Dr. Nesrin Dilbaz said, "Our psychosocial interventions are very important because we have a very serious group. At the moment, emergency medicine, orthopedics, general surgery, our doctors in all provinces are working with great effort. We see the wreckage here, but we have serious heroes behind us and we need to care about mental health. If we do not emphasize this, the mental consequences of these situations can be very severe, because people have lost their identities in a sense."
Post-Earthquake Traumatic Grief and Grief Process
Stating that the mourning period must be experienced, Prof. Dr. Nesrin Dilbaz said, "We recommend that children over the age of 10 attend the funeral so that they can see the reality. But they will be with their loved ones and those they feel safe with. Those ceremonies are our culture and traditions. We can get through it. We need to live our mourning in our own way. The reading of our mawlid, our 7 prayers, our 40, our 51...We need to ensure that we stand together in solidarity and we need to make sure that we ceremoniously replace the relatives that we have actually lost so that we can accept that they are dead, we can mourn them and we can cope with it."
Stating that two emotions emerge in people after the earthquake, Prof. Dr. Nesrin Dilbaz said: "The first one is the situation called re-experiencing, that is, they start to relive that trauma in their minds. The second is the state of avoidance, people start to avoid life, they don't go to the bathroom, they start to fear 'if I am caught in the bathroom and I am under the rubble, if I am found in that situation, that is, if I somehow die naked'. They don't go inside the houses and don't take anything from their homes. This is what avoidance behavior looks like."
When to Get Support?
Prof. Dr. Nesrin Dilbaz noted that not only Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but all the diseases in the psychiatry literature will start to be seen, especially after a few months, after many things have settled, and said, "If we cannot deliver psychosocial interventions sufficiently, we will face very serious problems such as depression and anxiety. Sufficient number of personnel have been trained, they are currently waiting for duty. After the acute period we are in passes, teams that can take this task are ready in every province. Organization is very important here."
Prof. Dr. Nesrin Dilbaz noted that people sometimes express guilt over the food they eat during this period and said, "No, we will not feel ashamed, but we will help. We are living beings, the magnitude of the pain of others does not minimize our pain, we feel their pain even if we are far away. But life will continue so that we can help our citizens there. Otherwise, we don't help them by starving, not sleeping or tormenting ourselves here. We will overcome all of these in time. My suggestion for this is this: Tell your problems to the people you love and trust, talk to them, if you cannot find someone to listen, talk to professional teams, but definitely tell, talk and share your feelings."
Prof. Dr. Nesrin Dilbaz stated that earthquake victims should be made to feel that they are not alone and said: "What is useful for us is to feel that we love each other and that we are with each other. People made donations, cried and felt sad for people they didn't even know. This is a very important feeling, both for the person who cries and for the person to whom the help goes. But we need to be careful there too. In terms of psychological traumas, we talked about a week, we will talk about a month, we will talk about six months, we will talk about two years. It is the same for aid. We need to be very well organized and spread over time that we support them spiritually, not just with rhetoric, but by organizing them. They should relive the sense of integrity, the sense of trust."