For Immediate Release - 6 October 2009

'Your brain does not know what to do with the horrific sights, sounds, smells'

MANILA -- Aid workers responding to disasters, such as last week's typhoons in the Philippines and Indonesian earthquakes, frequently suffer from severe anxiety and post-traumatic stress, according to experts with World Vision, the international humanitarian organisation.

"For those responding to a disaster for the first time, you're seeing things that are unbelievable, horrific and you cannot explain it," says Michael Hegenauer, Ph.D., World Vision's Director of Staff Care. "Your brain does not know what to do with the horrific sights, sounds and smells you are experiencing."

While survey results vary, InterAction, a U.S-based alliance of humanitarian agencies, noted last year that upwards of 50 percent of "non-governmental organization (NGO) expatriates exhibited symptoms of burnout, depression, or PTSD," especially those returning from conflict zones. "Responding to natural disasters represents a difficult - often untenable - race against time," says James East, World Vision's Asia communications director. "There is a wide array of often-conflicting demands - the challenge of reaching victims, marshalling relief convoys, helping survivors cope with physical and emotional trauma, and, of course, responding to requests from journalists and expectations of our marketing staff."

Hegenauer conducted workshops last month for the organisation's Philippine staff on "critical incident stress management," in which aid workers' peers are taught how to help prepare emergency workers before, during and after they return from disaster sites. He is careful to distinguish this training from formal education in psychiatry or psychology.

"It's psychological first aid," he says. "These are interventions that are one-on-one and in small and large groups." "If these efforts do not address the individual's needs, he or she will receive a referral to a psychiatrist, or some other professional in the health or medical fields appropriate in that person's culture, language and context, including traditional health practices."

For World Vision's staff in the Philippines, the timing of Hegenauer's training sessions, part of a longer certification process, could not have been better.

"We have three employees who lost almost everything except the clothes they were wearing," says Joy B. Alvarez, director of Organizational Development for the World Vision Philippine office. "For some, they were on the roof or second floor of their homes, and had no food or water. It took more than two days for the water to recede. We have some staff whose anxieties are now triggered when it starts to rain. And their children experience anxiety as well."

The training is designed to assist the person in crisis to return to normal life, Alvarez says. It mitigates the impact of the critical incident, and facilitates recovery processes in people having normal reactions to abnormal events.

She also noted that some employees, working in previous disasters, were referred for professional counseling to a psychologist.

In addition to the physical and psychological effects, there are spiritual dimensions to aid workers' trauma.

"As a humanitarian worker, you will be confronted with troubling questions and spiritual paradoxes," says John Fawcett, a former World Vision employee and now a New Zealand-based consultant to non-governmental organisations. "There will come a time, if you pursue this career for long, when a profound lack of understanding will threaten to sweep away your actions, beliefs, achievements, and even reason for being. Knowing this challenge will come, and ensuring that there are close friends who can hear your questions without harming you, is an essential component to preventative stress management."

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