Drew Hinshaw wrote a report in the Wall Street Journal about the people who had to bury the 11,000 people who died from Ebola; are now having to deal with the posttraumatic stress from the experience. Many of these workers were involved in the Civil War of 14 years as well. I can add to those experiences the trauma of seeing many people die from malaria and other tropical diseases. When I lived in Liberia, many families would give a permanent name to their children at the age of eight because 50% of the children died before the age of eight from tropical diseases.
From these conditions it is easy for me to see as the article reports before the Ebola outbreak in 2011 “40% of the 500,000 people in Nimba County exhibited symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder.” That is 200,000 people in one county. If you then factor in the Ebola tragedy stress already had a breaking point would show many people are suffering.
For 4,000,000 people in Liberia there is only one psychiatrist. Potentially a 40% being affected with post-traumatic stress disorder when be around 1,600,000. The actual number maybe more than that but I have no way of knowing.
Related to this large number would be people suffer from depression and anxiety.
I have already reported on how schizophrenia is being treated by chaining people to trees. When I lived in Liberia I saw a man who was nude with the car bumper chained to his body. He was walking right down the street in the rainy season in Buchanan. This let everybody know that he had a mental illness and without treatment that was his lot.
From these reports the only sensible treatments available would be through clinics or nurses administrating hopefully medicines that treat the disorders.
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| Matthew Kruah, one of the so-called burial boys, who helped inter victims of Ebola |
The New York Times reports Benedict Carey, in Ghana and another places in Africa nurses are being trained as well as community support systems to help people with these problems. The reality is there will never be enough doctors. People can still be helped if nurses, therapists can be trained to see what the doctor sees to prescribe the right medicine and dose; and then monitor the progress and make changes like the doctor would. Support could be given by training pastors, the most educated in an area, to run support groups. Online education would be one of the best ways to get to meet people connected to good ideas about support groups. AA could train people to run groups for alcohol and drugs abuse.
Connecting with people who are interested and have people skills could be very helpful in helping people with posttraumatic-stress, depression and anxiety. I think it is important to remember that the people who are being trained come from a different educational system then what we have in United States.
In the New York Times article by Carey reported that these programs would have to be evaluated in time to see if they were effective. To be honest with you I think we are years away from seeing more psychiatrists in Liberia. Doctors follow the money so training nonprofessional people is something that we have to do better.
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