Are you struggling with a lack of motivation to fully rebuild after Hurricane Dorian, due to fear of loss in future hurricanes?
Is the impending hurricane season triggering intense feelings of anxiety, or changes in mood?
Are you in a place of feeling emotionally stuck, not knowing how to process the trauma of Dorian, or wondering whether you ought to be much further along in your healing process than you might find yourself today?
Such thoughts and emotions are reasonable and normal, according to psychologist Dr. Gregory Swann, whose insight in an interview with Perspective shed light on roadblocks to disaster restoration that in some quarters, might be taken for granted.
In Dorian’s aftermath, Swann worked with the National Emergency Management Agency’s (NEMA) mental health unit, as part of Grand Bahama’s Mental Health and Psychosocial Support team
His career includes 15 years of work as a disaster psychologist with the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), as well as the Georgia Emergency Management Agency, responding to most of the country’s national and federal declared disasters since 1992.
Regarding feelings of nervousness and fear as the upcoming hurricane season approaches, Swann said, “There would be a reasonable degree of concern to the extent that we would have had Dorian and then the pandemic, and those who were most affected by the hurricane would not have fully processed the impact that Dorian would have had on them physically, emotionally and psychologically.
“And when you compound that with the issues of the pandemic, what you will find in the upcoming weeks as we enter the new hurricane season, there will be a reasonable degree of heightened anxiety. You will find that for persons who live in the northern Bahamas, the expectation of heightened anxiety would be higher.
“Islands like Grand Bahama and Abaco would have had a history of critical incidents that is disproportionate to other areas of The Bahamas. In some cases, there would be heightened levels of behavioral irritation, issues with depression, and issues with prevention, meaning persons would want to leave Grand Bahama or Abaco with any indication of a pending hurricane.
“This repeated emotional traumatization will raise itself in the next six to 10 weeks, and you will find a lot more folks being anxious, and a lot more folks reporting symptoms of emotional and psychological stress.”
In our casual conversations with residents, some expressed being unable to press through the fear of future loss, wondering if rebuilding and normalizing one’s property makes sense considering that another major storm can put them right back at square one.
Swann offered, “That is a rightful and legitimate emotional expectation. I find that some folks would have taken it a step further, in that while some of us would have taken the initiative to start rebuilding and renormalizing our environment, there is still a large number of folks who refuse to, or have difficulty even beginning the process.
“They are having great distress in terms of having to sit down and plan how to rebuild, how to put their physical life back together, knowing that they have difficulty getting the necessary funding and support in some instances.
“There is still a large number of persons who haven’t fully repaired their homes as yet, and they are having a great deal of difficulty in doing so, whether it is emotional and/or financial, and they do not feel that they have the energy to do it. You will find that this will persist for some time to come.”
The stress is compounded for older Grand Bahamians and Abaconians who not only must move on with their life after Dorian, but who are in a high-risk grouping for COVID-19, which creates its own share of concerns and fears for one’s health and safety.
Swann said the compounding of such fears can cause people to have difficulties with clear thinking, and making good decisions in the rebuilding process.
He added, “They may have issues with orientation – feeling overwhelmed and hopeless – and those are the array of emotions that are happening in a significant percentage of our population.
“The easiest thing for human behavior is to just walk away from it, be very passive about it, or not go back to trying to pick up the pieces of hard work and years of financial investment, thinking this thing can happen again.
“So, they feel stuck.”
GET HELP
Swann encouraged Dorian survivors who are grappling with the storm’s trauma to, “get help or try to get some support, whether it is professional help for their emotional and psychological welfare, or getting professional help in terms of helping them rebuild or get beyond where they are.”
He acknowledged that residents of Grand Bahama and Abaco need help to chart a clear path to picking up the pieces, and pointed out that displacement and having to live with relatives for a prolonged period of time adds “abnormal stress” to the displaced, as well as their families.
“It is very difficult to begin the healing process if you haven’t gotten the fundamental pieces of your life back in order,” Swann pointed out.
He disclosed, meantime, that one of the most positive outcomes for mental health services was that the aftermath of Dorian, “was able to peel back all of the layers of the services – good, bad and indifferent – and allow us to put in place what would be a comprehensive mental health disaster management program moving forward.”
Swann said mental health teams have had support from some of the world’s leading disaster management agencies, including the Pan American Health Organization, the World Health Organization, FEMA, and agencies such as Caritas Internationalis and IsraAID.
Caritas Internationalis is a confederation of 165 Catholic relief, development and social service organizations operating in over 200 countries and territories worldwide, and has established a permanent presence in Grand Bahama with a fully Bahamian team of mental health professionals, including psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers, who provide services free of charge.
IsraAID is an international non-governmental humanitarian aid organization based in Israel.
Swann shared, “We have now mapped it out that in the event we have another major catastrophic event, from a mental health standpoint we should be well equipped to render those kinds of services.
“Part of the public relations system in the upcoming season should make sure that when you talk about shelters and all of the other physical support, we build in all the emotional and psychological support.”
May is Mental Health Awareness month, and against that backdrop, Swann highlighted what he has seen as a “peeling back of negative perceptions and stigmas” about seeking mental health services in Dorian’s aftermath, given the sweeping numbers of residents who needed such services due to the trauma they experienced.
As for those who might be hard on themselves or others, believing that heightened emotional states nearly two years after Dorian is a sign of weakness, Swann dispelled that notion, stating, “Most of us who have been involved in a major trauma, two years later, five years later, 10 years later, would be surprised to know that something could trigger something in us, and it feels like the event just happened yesterday, or last week.
“These things have to be properly managed, and to some extent they are life lasting, but they can be managed.
“It is not one of those incidents where I get some intervention and it goes away and my mind totally forgets about it. You are able to manage it, and you are able to live with it.”
The post Living with fear appeared first on The Nassau Guardian.
source https://thenassauguardian.com/living-with-fear/
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