The psychologist who provides free care to those affected by DANA: “They have seen death up close, rats, smells… Children need urgent psychological help”

This is the common denominator of what Rocío García Torres hears on the other end of the phone, an expert in psychological intervention in crises and emergencies, who has been providing free psychological support to those affected by DANA in Valencia since last Saturday through the website. helpana.orgthat connects specialized psychologists with affected people for the catastrophe.

This doctor in Psychology, professor at Villanueva University, who was already part of the team of professionals hired by the Ministry of Health to provide psychological care to those affected by Covid-19, highlights that “today, there is not much help organized in this sense, when we are talking about the fact that, in a matter of survival, the psyche is the driving force of life and it is necessary to reach all towns to be able to assist the people who need it.

You point out that psychological attention in this case is as important or more important than eating or sleeping.

The situation is very serious, mental health is overwhelming and everything indicates that this is going to be a massacre. People who have lost their children, their partners, their parents or siblings. Some are already aware, many others have someone missing and live in anguish, uncertainty and lack of information without this type of support. There are people who already had some type of previous pathology or mental disorder, who are the most vulnerable because they do not have a ‘strong self’ from the start, or a psyche that can protect them. But we can say that in total 75 percent of affected people will develop very serious problems or psychopathologies of some kind.

Which is it?

Anxiety disorders, with depressive symptoms, post-traumatic stress, with autolytic ideation or who are even going to commit suicide because they have lost everything. What leads a person to take their own life? The key variable in this situation is hopelessness, that they do not see that there is a future. We are talking about the hopelessness of people who live in the countryside, or who have lost their small businesses, who feel totally unprotected and vulnerable.

We can say that these citizens are still in shock.

Yes, and that is why early intervention is very important, because if this shock is not prepared or managed properly, it does not drain, it becomes chronic over time and the long-term consequences will be worse. For example, we talk about trauma or complicated grief.

Where would you start, as a disaster expert?

The first variable is to inform people, there is nothing more calming than information. In fact, psychologists intervene from there, looking for data, asking: ‘what do you need?’ This lack of information is the main problem. Everything that comes is rumors and that causes anguish and restlessness.

What is needed, when we refer to minors, without school, without friends, with absolutely desperate parents…?

We have to be clear that a child is not well if his parents are not well, which they are not. People are desperate, because they lack information, they lack resources (water, food, medicine, transportation) and they are solving it with shovels when they need excavators, firefighters, and for the consortium to tell them: ‘We are going to help you.’

Since we know that a child will be fine if his father is well, we have to focus on Maslow’s pyramid and from there cover needs. These minors are receiving information that they are not capable of processing. As I say, corpses, dead animals, rats, smells, people who have lost their nerve… You can’t give what you don’t have. We cannot give these children peace of mind that we do not have.

Hence the need for this service. Being able to help parents to help their children. First, be able to calm these parents, giving them what they need at all times.

How should you act with children?

In my opinion, the anguish, the situation of chaos, is such that no one is paying attention to the children. What is the risk? That if we do not intervene, if we do not accompany them, if we do not regulate them emotionally, calm them… they will develop a vision of the world as if it were a dangerous place, where a feeling of lack of protection and lack of control abounds, which It will give rise to an insecure attachment, which is the basis for a lot of subsequent psychopathologies.

How can their parents help them?

Helping them to resignify, with clarity, without deceiving them so that they can reinterpret, in a more objective way, not from their childish subjectivity and their fear of what is happening. Offer them an appropriate narrative so that they can grow up healthy. Give them continued support and be attentive to the early detection of problems and symptoms.

What type of symptoms should we not lose sight of?

For symptoms such as nervousness, excessive activation, apathy, emotional disconnection (dissociation), pay attention to physiological responses because the body keeps score. We are going to see people who show freezing effects, that is a dissociative symptom of trauma, which affects children and adults, and is a sign that we must intervene.

If we talk about shock and we talk about trauma, we talk about the fact that there are memories that will remain recorded, in a much deeper way than specific images. This experience remains recorded in the implicit memory, in the body, in the skin. We have people who if it doesn’t drain, they don’t ventilate, if they don’t elaborate on what’s happening to them, they stay trapped in that memory constantly. This intensifies the trauma.

What not to do?

This early intervention is essential so that the symptoms do not worsen, so that the affected people do not live a life dominated by fear. That they can expose themselves to what they have experienced and what it has generated in them, elaborating on it, because what resists, persists. That is, if they don’t make it, it will stay there. That they can understand what has happened, without avoiding, remembering or repressing what they experienced, or denying what happened.

What can parents do or say to those children who are not even going to school, who do not have a home, who have lost a family member…? What tools do they have?

We must give these children back the feeling of stability, security and control. That is why it is very important that we know that for that child, the entire universe in the world is that father or mother. There are things that are transmitted with your gaze, physically lowering yourself to the child’s height, holding his hands and transmitting that security, I don’t know what is going to happen, I don’t know how long it will take us to get out of this, don’t deceive, but We’re going to go out and I’ll do whatever it takes to protect you, to give them that feeling of solvency: ‘I, mom, don’t control what happens, but I can control what I do with it.’

Be very attentive to that feeling of helplessness, which is real, because they are not going to school, they do not have a home, or they are living in a neighbor’s house, without their toys… You can tell them: ‘Everything has failed us, but I I am not going to fail you, because I have the ability to protect you.’ A child doesn’t need anything more than that, as far as his parents are concerned.

What is not in our hands is no longer a problem in that we have no room for action, but we have to focus on what we can control. It’s called ‘internal locus of control’: ‘I have the ability to hug you, to regulate you, to be in rhythm with the body, I am here.’ It doesn’t have so much to do with what I do with my son, but with the verb ‘ser’ and ‘estar’. Be solvent and emotionally available.

As the psychologist Donnad Winnicott said, we can be ‘the good enough mother’, which is one who is emotionally available to read her child’s internal state and accompany him in that emotion. Let the child know that there is an adult who looks after their emotional state. ‘I know how you are and I’m here with you.’ No one can take that away from us.