SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, March 19. (EUROPE PRESS) –
Psychology professionals have warned of the insufficient resources available to the Ministry of Health of the Government of the Canary Islands and the other public administrations to attend to the mental health of the population affected by the recent volcanic eruption in La Palma, despite the increase in demand and the needs for psychological treatment that this catastrophe has caused.
This was expressed during a telematic debate organized by the opinion group La Palma Opina, in which the psychologists Estefanía Martín participated (who, since the eruption, first with the College of Psychology, and now with the Los Llanos City Council, attends victims), Noelia Capote (who has altruistically offered her services to victims, and whose family also lost property due to lava flows) and Elizabeth López.
The three psychologists also agreed that the good or bad management of public administrations with aid and socioeconomic recovery measures can shorten or prolong the psychological suffering of those affected and, therefore, make it easier or more difficult for them to overcome the post-traumatic symptoms that many people experience.
“In order for the affected people to recover, it is necessary to build trust in the institutions and in the authorities because if not, the blow is double: losing their properties and also the feeling of abandonment,” Elizabeth López stressed.
Along the same lines, Estefanía Martín – a reference psychologist at the Casa Massieu de Los Llanos through the agreement between the Canarian Government and the College of Psychologists during the eruption – stated that people “have gone from sadness to anger and to feeling abandoned because not so much that her problem is no longer of interest and they feel uncertainty with the public administrations, and on top of that they took her away from the psychologists who treated her”.
For Noelia Capote, “adding uncertainty triples the victimization of the affected people, who realize that the volcano is not the worst, but now the paperwork for recovery”, so this psychologist believes that if there are no answers from the Public Administration, “uncertainty adds pain and suffering” to the affected families.
FEW PSYCHOLOGISTS AND MANY LAWSUITS
Special emphasis is made by the participants in the debate on the lack of sufficient resources in mental health care in La Palma. “We are at the bottom of Spain in the ratio of psychologists per population, if you also take into account that there are 130 in the entire Canary Islands, that is, one for every 18,000 people, so they are not enough,” says Noelia Capote.
Regarding this problem, Estefanía Martín recalled that the team of which she was a part, in the operation with volunteers launched with the College of Psychology with a grant from the Canarian Government, came to care for 3,500 people from the three municipalities of the Valle de Aridane , a project that ended last December, although the service was later taken over by the Los Llanos City Council, and it was also decided to hire some psychologists through the Extraordinary Employment Plan (also affected by this catastrophe) and the Public Health reinforced with a single clinical psychologist his service in the insular Hospital. In the opinion of Estefanía Martín, this is a clearly insufficient measure to meet the growing demand on the island.
Elizabeth López also confirmed that mental health “is saturated, patients are being treated at a rate that is not adequate.”
THE SYMPTOMS OF THOSE AFFECTED
Regarding the post-traumatic symptoms presented by those affected, Estefanía Martín indicated that at a general level “difficulties appear with sleep, sadness, anger, anxiety and many people realize that the volcanic eruption was only the tip of the iceberg, since they had problems pre-eruption psychological
“Most of the people affected by this catastrophe will not develop a significant psychopathology, but a part will develop a serious disorder and there may be many considering that there were 7,000 evacuees. There may be different levels of affectation: some will not have important affectation , others will develop acute stress disorder in the first days and weeks and others will enter zones of post-traumatic stress disorder, which is somewhat more complex than the initial acute stress reactions”, explained this psychologist.
In relation to symptoms, Elizabeth López pointed out that experiencing a situation like the volcano “which leaves us in shock creates a process of derealization and depersonalization”, although “not everyone is going to develop a pathology”.
He also warns of the somatic consequences of this psychic suffering: “With continuous stress and anxiety, cortisol levels are very high and that’s where skin, digestive, sleep or eating problems come from,” he said. “Cortisol is that hormone that is activated when we’re in danger so we can run away, and we live in a cortisol-polluted society,” she concluded.
