Healing the Tsunami Children

Mehdi Naïmi is a registered art therapist and a play therapist who has worked for years with children in therapeutic ways on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. He is passionate about the plight of children everywhere.

In March 2006 and again in January 2007 Mehdi went to the south and east coast of Sri Lanka to work with children traumatised by the 2004 Tsunami.

Sarah Ebell, (1960-2006) volunteered her time on this mission as a Child and Youth Care worker.

Many children in Sri Lanka have suffered great losses. A brief respite from the 20 years of civil war was abruptly ended by the Tsunami waves of December 2004. Grief, fear, anxiety and depression are among the most common symptoms which still persist and interfere with the normal functioning and development of these children.

more from Globe and Mail article:

Officials at UNICEF and other agencies had expected to see psychological trauma in those children whose parents or siblings disappeared into the sea. But they didn't anticipate the level of horror and fear experienced by the far larger group of children whose families survived but lost their homes and possessions.

For these kids, the experience has been one of repeated loss: First, the waves took away their house, their room and perhaps some of their loved ones. Then, again and again, they have found themselves losing friends and familiar surroundings as their families have been moved from emergency shelters to temporary housing to semi-permanent shelters and houses.

It is these children, it turns out, who are paralyzed with fear, and officials are beginning to realize that they may not simply get over it.

"The popular belief is that the children are resilient," Ms. Bainard said. "If we see them running around, people assume that they are coping. But the loss is tremendous that they've endured. It would be misleading for us to think that they will ever get over this."

The key to getting them over this trauma, most observers say, is ostensibly simple: just let them behave like children, in playgrounds and parks, and talk about the experience with one another.

Disaster Relief Information from the American Art Therapy Association