The material is specifically for those who are forced to leave their home, as well as for those who interact with refugees – volunteers, social workers and simply caring people.
Emergency help differs significantly from the usual psychological counseling and even more so psychotherapy. There are separate areas of training: emergency injury, short -term shock trauma and others. Receptions that apply under ordinary conditions do not work, and sometimes worsen the condition of people who find themselves in emergency.
It is important to understand the volunteers and all those who help refugees from hot spots on how to really support people, and what to say or should not be done. And how to remain stable for those who were forced to leave their home and part with loved ones? To answer these questions, we talked with our expert, psychologist Anastasia Gurneva, who in 2008 worked with refugees from South Ossetia.
What is
needed to remain stable in emergency
The people we call refugees survived the bombing. It’s really scary. Someone lost loved ones or was wounded. Someone was left without a house-that is, without everything that has been associated with the comfort and safety of their family for many years. Taking only the necessary, they run from their native land, where their lives are now in danger. All this situation is serious stress. And at this stage it is important that he does not go into psychological injury.
What is necessary to protect against psychological injury?
1. Resources. This applies to a variety of things – food, heat, housing, clothes, sleep, emotional warmth.
2. The possibility of choosing. In such a situation, it is extremely important that a person has the opportunity to choose at least something-the color of a toothbrush, a side dish, a scarf. When it is impossible to influence big circumstances, the right to choose at least in small things helps maintain stability.
3. The continuity of the timeline. Rupture with loved ones, with a house, with his hometown can become part of the injury. It is important for people who are in such a situation that life does not stop.
It is necessary to keep the routine (brush your teeth, comb your hair, maintain sleep and wakefulness).
It is very important not to break off, but to maintain ties with those who remained and are not nearby. Call up, exchange messages, photos. If there is no way to keep contact temporarily – consider photos, talk about loved ones. Build plans.
It is important that a bewildered person can preserve, realize his identity. “Yes, I left the house now and left, I have a temporary refuge. But this is all the same (or the same) I-with my biography, with some personal things, with the same love for their loved ones. “.
Two approaches to working with victims in emergency
Traditionally, two approaches were used in work with victims of emergency.
First – relatively speaking, “pamper” people, create an artificial resource space for them. For example, send immediately to a sanatorium, children’s recreation camps. But practice shows that it works only temporarily – after rest, a person has to return to real life. Work, study, live with your memories and feelings after experienced. And faced with all this, a person feels helpless. He was “taken to the handles”, but he did not feel his strength and the ability to cope with difficulties.
Second – give people the opportunity to continue to remain in their social roles, function and cope with your duties in new circumstances, already safe. For example, in Israel, a bus driver who survived after the attack will definitely return to work and, with the necessary support, passes the same route. So in it a faith is fixed in its capabilities – it retains not powerlessness, but the ability to act, to be useful to society in demand. And this is very important for the mental stability and further life of a person.