Preventive and Therapeutic Mental Health Care after the Earthquake-Expert Opinion from the Psychiatric Association of Turkey 2

Abstract

Two major earthquakes hit Turkey at the Kahramanmaraş region on February 6th 2023. The earthquakes affected almost 15 million individuals, resulting in more than forty thousand deaths, thousands of wounded and the destruction of ancient cities of humankind. Immediately after the earthquakes, the Psychiatric Association of Turkey organized an educational event to address the needs for a guidance on how to approach a trauma of such a big scale. The experts in this educational event summarized their presentations and prepared this review to guide the mental health professionals serving victims of this disaster. The review summarizes the early symptoms of trauma, and puts a framework on the principles of psychological first aid, the approach at the initial stages of the disaster, principles of planning, triage, and psychosocial support systems and the proper use of medications. The text covers the evaluation of the impact of trauma, aligning psychiatric practice with psychosocial interventions, the improvement of counseling skills and methods to better understand the mind during the acute post trauma phase. A set of presentations highlight the challenges in child psychiatry, brings a systematic overview to the earthquake and discuss the symptomatology, first aid and intervention principles in children and adolescents. Last, the forensic psychiatric perspective is presented, followed by a piece on the essentials of delivering bad news and the review is concluded with the emphasis on burnout, a syndrome to avoid particularly for field professionals, and possible preventive measures. Keywords: Disaster, trauma, psychosocial support, psychological first aid, acute stress disorder, post traumatic stress disorder.