Recognizing post-disaster trauma is important

FOLLOWING THE INTENSE Hualien earthquake on April 6, the victims who were trapped, injured or lost loved ones might experience a series of complicated emotional responses, such as shock and denial, fear and anxiety, grief and loss, guilt and selfblame, anger and frustration, depression and hopelessness.

While treating past cases of acute post-disaster stress response, I have discovered that many people experience feelings of self-blame and depression.

More specifically, many believe that their actions and decisions caused the disaster or exacerbated its effects. For example, when an earthquake occurred, a father decided to bring his family to a location he deemed safe.

However, members of his family were still injured. The father experienced intense feelings of self-blame: “It’s my fault that my family got hurt.”

Another instance was one survivor of the 2021 Hualien Taroko Express train derailment.

While escaping, the survivor witnessed a victim beside them who had been crushed, crying out: “Save me, save me,” but had no power to help and fled the scene.

Following the incident, the survivor constantly blamed himself for the passenger’s death.

Thoughts of self-blame such as this have a profound and lasting impact, as they not only could worsen emotional burdens, but can also lead to depression, anxiety and thoughts or actions of self-harm.

This could ultimately impede their recovery and make it difficult for them to move forward and rebuild their life.

For this reason, it is critical to help victims become aware of their self-blame, re-observe the cause of disasters from various angles and objectively assess the impact of their actions and decisions.

Victims need help to understand that disasters are often unpredictable and uncontrollable, learn to forgive themselves and place their attention on living in the present and rebuilding their lives, rather than wallowing in self-blame from the past.

Guilt and self-blame are also quite common in children who experience disasters. They might mistakenly believe that their thoughts or behaviors are somehow connected to the disaster.

Children often think: “My thoughts or behaviors can affect the world around me, even causing natural disasters.”

I treated three cases of suspected post-traumatic stress response in elementary-school children following Typhoon Morakot in 2009. All three children exhibited feelings of self-blame and depression.

They believed that their actions — stealing a wallet to go play in an Internet cafe, not listening to their father and opting to kick rocks outside instead of going inside to eat dinner, and getting into an argument with family, respectively — led to God’s punishment, triggering flooding.

Another instance was a child who, on his birthday, wished to have a day off from school.

When a typhoon later struck and caused the school to close, he believed it was his wishes that had caused the typhoon to hit.

In these situations, children mistakenly attribute their behaviors or thoughts as being the cause of disasters, leading to erroneous feelings of guilt and self-blame.

It is incredibly important that parents, caregivers, teachers and psychologists be aware of this and help children understand the real causes of disasters to lessen irrational feelings of self-blame.

Ko Hui-chen is a professor at Asia University’s Department of Psychology and president of the Taichung Clinical Psychologist Association. TRANSLATED BY KYRA GUSTAVSEN