POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER

In the year 2004-05 we experienced the wrath of her rage when mother earth shook a little. Several natural calamities round the globe in the form of tsunami, hurricanes and major earth quacks made us feel that the pralaya is nearing. It created havoc with heavy loss of life and property. This has left a shudder in those who witnessed or suffered and survived the trauma. PTSD is the term used to describe the psychological manifestations resulting from the long term damage that follows such experiences.

In India we had the brunt of the tsunami and the earth quack which left an immense fear in the minds of persons in the east coast of tamilnadu and Andaman and nicobar islands. After the initial phase of settling down all the  tsunami affected persons in the camps of Port Blair  through safe shelter, clothing, food, water and immediate medical aid (prevention of infections and treatment of injuries) the second phase of health issues were taken up. One of them was to prevent long term PTSD. Apart from the main stream psychiatric team our yoga team was also invited for this work. This was about 4-5 weeks after the calamity had happened. The psychological state of the affected people in those camps varied from very stable persons (who could involve in relief activities and tell us stories of how they could act with courage to save lives during the tsunami ) to people who were totally blanked out with the shock. Most people in common had varying degrees of anxiety. The word “pani aaya” was the most terrible trigger for every one. Even in the safe camps if any one uttered these two words a shock would pass through their body. Our job was to see that they come out of this state as soon as possible so that it would not leave long term damage to the system. In our survey we tried not only to see the degree of stress they were experiencing but we also tried to find out what coping mechanisms they were using. The interesting observation was that the degree of trauma was much less in the inland dwellers from nicobar island (triblas) and was much higher in the mainlanders (those who had their ties and ancestry in the mainland in tamilnadu or Andhra or Punjab). The mainlanders  adapted to prayer  as their coping strategy whereas the social support system helped the nicobaris to cope. 
The first step in our handling the situation was to unwind the locked up emotions  by listening to their experiences in small groups by our team. This was important to prevent the effect of the experience being pushed into their subconscious mind which results in chronic PTSD. We had to start  active yoga intervention with the teenagers and school teachers  who had to get back to their studies ,and  also work with  the elderly who had started manifesting the aggravation of their existing ailments such as asthma, hypertension, diabetes , arthritis etc. A separate unit of our team took up the task of working   with smaller children.
 We designed the program of suitable simple body movements and asanas with synchronized breathing, pranayama, meditation and yogic counseling (group and individual) to bring out the innermost core of their personality the ananda maya kosha which is the abode of all healing , health and confidence.