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Indonesia needs to prepare psychological aid for disaster victims
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Residents of Joyotakan in Serengan, Surakarta, Central Java, are relocated to safer places using rubber boats on June 19. (thejakartapost.com/Ganug Nugroho Adi)
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iving in a country prone to natural disasters, Indonesians will have to deal with life-threatening psychosocial problems that require great effort to reduce post-traumatic stress disorders, psychiatrists said in Jakarta on Monday.
Natural disasters such as tsunamis, floods and earthquakes can increase the rate of mental illnesses by 20 percent, Nova Riyanti Yusuf, a psychiatrist from the Indonesian Psychiatric Association (PDSKJI), said in a press conference on mental health.
“Post-disaster psychosocial intervention has to be made available in disaster-prone areas,” she said.
A form of such intervention is psychological first aid (PFA) – a method designed to reduce stress – that health officials can implement to support evacuees, she added.
When Nova served as a House of Representatives member from 2009 to 2014, she took initiative to conduct PFA for people displaced by Mount Merapi’s eruption in 2010. At that time, more than 270 people were killed and over 250,000 people were evacuated.
A rapid assessment discovered that 6 percent of the evacuees suffered from depression, while 15.6 percent experienced anxiety.
“With funds from the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), I implemented a PFA model project by training 200 nurses from five psychiatric hospitals in Central Java,” she said.
After that, she implemented a similar PFA model project for victims of the Mt. Kelud eruption in East Java in 2014.
“I hope this kind of project can be carried out in the future through multi-sector collaboration between the government, professional associations and other related parties,” she said. (win/bbn)
