Coping with trauma
A six-year-old boy who witnessed his father’s murder while driving with him has since developed PTSD. According to counsellors, the child keeps drawing graves with his father’s face, as well as red and black cars. “His father’s car was red and the one of the murderers was black. Because immediately after the murder he did not receive psychological help the boy started to talk to imaginary creatures,” a counsellor explained.
Overload
CARE officials say that since the beginning of the year, their counselling unit at the community centre has assisted about 7,000 Iraqi refugees.
Due to this overload of patients and the fact that counsellors do not have the means to undertake more than three therapy sessions, the centre refers patients to more specialised professionals for severe cases that need medication.
“We are not specialised psychologists offering deep solutions but we can detect the problem and refer it to specialists,” el-Ansary said.
In those cases fees for psychological consultations and medication, prescribed by a psychiatrist, are covered by NGOs such as CARE or the Jordanian Women Union, a local CARE partner.
However, UNHCR medical specialists agree that clinical treatment with medication alone does not solve the problem as the symptoms may reappear once the treatment is over.
“The main need is for psycho-social counselling. Cognitive-behaviour therapy does much more than just medication, or at least, when these are needed, both therapies should go hand in hand,” Riad al-Akour, a medical officer at UNHCR, told IRIN. “In addition, anti-depressants are much more expensive and therefore unaffordable for refugees who decide to go on their own to a doctor,” he added.
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