Psychiatric Treatment Ready, Where Are The Patients?

BATU PAHAT, Jan 27 (Bernama) -- While it is a known fact the majority of victims who suffer from natural disasters which ruin their homes or kill their loved ones, need psychiatric treatment but para medics on duty here are facing a different kind of problem.
Armed with the tools of trade, they are finding it hard to find patients who come forward to seek treatment for the psychological scar left behind by the devastating floods that lashed Johor twice in December and January, resulting in more than 100,000 people moved to flood relief centres set up by the government.
Though most of the evacuees have since return home, there are still about 10,000-odd victims in Sri Medan and Parit Sulong, the two small towns located about 30km from Batu Pahat, the only district in Johor still having flood victims at relief centres.
The high number of victims at relief centres here was due to slow receding of floodwaters though it has been more than two weeks since the distrct was hit by massive floods.
Houses of flood victims here were either washed away or still under two feet of water while the land they had worked on all their lives needs refarming. This mental trauma is enough for the weak-minded to require psychiatric help.
On Thursday, Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek said the authorities were worried of the psychological effects on the victims left behind by the second wave of floods.
The victims, after having lost their homes and belongings, have to put up in community and multipurpose halls and schools, which have been converted into relief centres, have little or no privacy at all.
A tough and arduous task now awaits the para medics from the Batu Pahat Hospital, Tampoi Permai Jaya Hospital and village health clinics here.
They have to travel from one relief centre to another to talk to the victims to see if they were mentally stable or needed professional help.
A Bernama check at Sri Medan and Parit Sulong showed though medical personnel were on standby at relief centres, they were treating victims for normal ailments like cough, cold and fever.
Abdul Hamid Abdul Osman, a para medic on duty at Dewan Sri Medan, one of the 22 relief centres in Sri Medan housing about 70 families, said detecting psychiatric cases was not easy as communication with the patient was an important criteria.
"We go to the relief centres to give motivation...we talk to them, this is very important. We give them counselling but the tough part is finding the patients," he said.
Another factor deterring patients from coming forward to seek treatment from psychiatric ailments like depression and anxiety was the social stigma that comes along with it.
Another health officer stationed at Parit Sulong, who declined to be named, said once word goes out that a particular person is getting psychiatric treatment, the society brands that person as "mad or kurang siuman (mentally unsound)" while this is not the case.
"Usually, these people are just depressed or face anxiety attacks. For example last night, it rained for three hours and we had cases of people getting scared by the downpour. Because they have gone through the floods, they fear that every time it rains, the floods are coming.
"It's like a driver who meets with a bad accident. He or she will naturally fear taking to the wheel again but with proper counselling and guidance, it will be all right.
"They need some form of treatment or this scar will stay on for a long time to come...some can even keep it for years and finally burst or even run amok thinking about the floods and the life they enjoyed before the disaster," she added.
While it is true psychiatric cases need urgent attention, these medical officers are having a tough time explaining to flood victims that not all who seek treatment were "mad" or "mentally deranged".
But first they have an uphill task ahead of identifying the victims.