Acehnese may be facing mental illnesses

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

After the heartening remarks by the World Health Organization (WHO) that the tsunami-hit areas in Aceh were free of epidemics, the organization announced Tuesday that mental illnesses might affect about one-eight of the population of the devastated province.

"We expect that certain psychiatric disorders will increase. We expect that people will suffer from severe depression, anxiety, sleep disorders. We may also witness some increase in suicide attempts, or in domestic violence...and it might affect 500,000 people," Director of the WHO's Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Benedetto Saraceno, said.

Saraceno explained that the disorders might appear if the Acehnese could not resume their daily and economic activities immediately.

"Psychiatric disorders are closely related to economic and health recovery in Aceh. But mostly, they should be addressed with psychosocial responses: empowering women, children, families and the communities in order to resume their resilience capacity," Saraceno said.

According to him, the threat might increase the number of suicides in the country, which is still considered low. He claimed that the average number of deaths due to suicide in Indonesia is 24 deaths in every 100,000 population.

Harry Minas, director of Center for International Mental Health, added that even enormous attention on trauma healing was not sufficient to avoid the danger of psychiatric illnesses.

"We think that it will not be helpful to the community of Aceh if we simply focus on the issue of trauma. Most importantly health and social institutions, be activated, strengthened and improved. Their reach has to be extended in order to deal with this situation."

Saraceno stressed that the WHO was not against establishing a trauma center. But the efforts should be integrated into a complete health system, relying on community based treatment.

"Our experience in establishing trauma centers, in Cambodia and Bosnia, were negative," he said.

The man whose office was in Geneva said that there were two things that had to be done. First was to train community leaders, women and people who were rooted in the community. Second, to strengthen health sector in Aceh, where currently there are only five psychiatrist living.

A National Professional Officer for WHO, Stephanus Widjaja said that WHO and the Health Ministry was setting up four teams consisting of experts in psychiatric therapy to train Acehnese in handling mental illnesses.

"We should be clear that there are no better persons to handle psychiatric disorders than the locals," he said. (006)