Haitians cope with post-traumatic stress disorder in a variety of ways
By Michael Swan
Catholic News Service
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – For more than a week after the January 2010 earthquake, Holy Cross Sister Marie-Pierre Saint Amour heard the nighttime cries of children crowded into the convent’s driveway and garden. Although they had sought shelter with the nuns, because of the aftershocks the children were reluctant to spend much time under the sisters’ sturdy roof.
Of course, they were troubled and traumatised, said Sr Marie-Pierre Saint Amour. She did not need her training in psychology to tell her that; she saw the angry face of the devil in their drawings.
Since then, Sr Marie-Pierre has come to realise her whole country is suffering from a sort of mass post-traumatic stress disorder.
She has had some success treating the young people, but how do you administer psychotherapy to a nation?
“Everyone is focused so much on the medical, but forgetting the psychological,” said Fr Michel Martin Eugene, a Holy Cross priest and psychologist from Haiti.
There are fewer than six psychiatrists in all of Haiti, said Dr Peter Kelly, president of the Crudem Foundation which runs Sacred Heart Hospital in the northern town of Milot with the support of the Order of Malta and Catholic Relief Services. Kelly and other volunteer doctors in Haiti after the earthquake observed widespread post-traumatic stress disorder. They also saw that most Haitian medical staff were reluctant to diagnose depression or the disorder.
“I believe it has something to do with their culture, as well as the fact that they have faced so many hardships throughout their history that they accept it as normal and move on with their lives,” Kelly wrote in an email.
Unlike the Haitian doctors, Haiti’s Religious see psychotherapy as an essential, yet missing, piece of the recovery.
Working with students in education and social work, the Psychosocial Support Network of the Haitian Religious Conference has developed a programme to help people face traumatic stress that often was ignored for months while they dug out their neighbours, tracked down lost family members, returned to work and managed life in a makeshift shelter. In many cases, depression, anxiety and all-pervading fear hit people months after the earthquake, Sr Marie-Pierre explained. “It’s a big crisis,” Fr Eugene said. “They wander the street, broken people.”
The Haitian Religious network’s psychosocial programme, aided by US$83,000 from the Canadian Catholic Organisation for Development and Peace, concentrates on Haitians supporting one another by talking through problems in their native Creole. University student Marguerite Charles credits the Sisters and the psychosocial programme for helping her. After last year’s earthquake, she spent more than four hours trapped in rubble.
When she was freed, she discovered her home was gone. “There was shock, trauma. I didn’t feel at ease anymore,” she said.
Like many Haitians, Charles was afraid to remain indoors for any length of time. The education major now leads a group of teenagers who gather to discuss their experience and their fears. She is passing on the experience of psychological healing she received from the Sisters.
She credits Sr Matilde Moreno, who is part of the support network, with restoring her confidence so she could return to classes.
Sr Matilde led the young people in dances and encouraged them to draw and paint, then got them talking about their fears.
Edna Genvieve lives in a tent beside her former home with her daughter. At one point she thought she and her daughter would always live in fear. “After the earthquake, I thought life was over,” she said. “When it rains, I’m still very afraid.”
She was even more afraid for her daughter, who over and over drew pictures of the devil. “It’s what she was living,” Genvieve said.
Only after her daughter overcame her dread did Genvieve begin to think about the future.
“Slowly, slowly I saw that life was still possible through my daughter – that there still is a future,” she said.