For Many in Mexico, No Consolation : Quakes Leave Behind Psychological Shock

Josefina Salgado, who lost seven children and her home in Mexico City’s earthquakes, sits shuddering uncontrollably on cot number 8B at a public shelter. Twice in the last week, she has tried to kill herself.

“For me, there is no consolation,” Salgado said.

Teresa Sanchez’s chest hurts and she is short of breath. The mother of two, forced to abandon her crumbling house and all her belongings inside, says she believes the pain is due to tension. “I don’t know where we will live. If we had a place to go, we would have gone there,” she said.

Daniel Darriba, 29, says that each time someone walks past his cot during the night in the shelter inside the Morelos Sports Center, where hundreds have sought refuge, he awakens in fright, certain the vibrations signal another earthquake. “There is a rumor that another earthquake is expected soon and that it will be even worse,” Darriba said.

Psychological Aftermath

Like so many residents who lived through the destructive Sept. 19 earthquake and the second quake the next day, Salgado, Sanchez and Darriba are trying to cope with varying degrees of sorrow and emotional pain, the psychological aftermath.

Psychologists and psychiatrists interviewed here said they believe that thousands of Mexico City’s 18 million residents are suffering a pattern of psychological disturbances that normally follow natural catastrophes.

The symptoms range from sleeplessness and loss of appetite, to uncontrolled crying, claustrophobia and, in extreme cases, suicidal urges.

While most residents have easily slipped back into their usual routines, others find that they are unable to concentrate on work during the day or feel they must sleep in their clothes at night, fearful that they will have to flee another quake.

Some people have suffered psychosomatic illnesses--rashes, asthma, even difficulties walking and talking.

To respond to the distress and trauma, psychologists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico are maintaining a 24-hour emergency hot line, offering free counseling and sending teams of clinical and social psychologists to hospitals and shelters for the homeless. In some shelters, they are holding group therapy sessions.

Hot-Line Calls

The government has brought in psychologists from the provinces to assist in the shelters, and the Psychoanalytical Assn. of Mexico is giving seminars to health workers and other professionals who will work with the distressed.

Dr. Juan Jose Sanchez Sosa, dean of the school of psychology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said that volunteers on the hot line receive about 50 calls an hour. He said the university clinic currently is receiving only about 10 clients a day as a result of the quakes, but he expects to see at least 50 daily within two months.

“We are already getting people who lost their family members. We are going to be visited by people who worked at the sites removing rubble and picking up the bodies,” Sanchez Sosa said.

Doctors say response to a tragedy such as this follows a normal course. At first many people panic, which often results in frenetic efforts to volunteer their help for several days.

After a period of excitement and panic, many people “relapse,” according to Sanchez Sosa, becoming fatigued, depressed and confused.

“They don’t understand what happened. This is what’s called the honeymoon phase and it lasts for one to two weeks. This is when people get promises that they will get help, and they think things could have been worse,” he said.

Angry, Bitter Phase

Finally comes a phase of anger and bitterness, when people begin to feel they were hit unfairly.

“Pretty soon you will see people looking for someone to blame, and it could be anyone from the government to God,” Sanchez Sosa said.

Vicente Garcia, a psychologist who works on the hot line, said many people call complaining that they are “anxious.”

“They say, ‘I can’t sleep, I can’t stay in one place, I have to keep walking.’ Sometimes they complain about other family members, saying that there is a lot of conflict and fighting,” Garcia said.

“They say their hands sweat, that they are depressed, or they imagine another earthquake is going to come and they think of all that could happen to them and their family. They imagine their building falling, people trying to save them and crying,” he said.

Some people say they are depressed by the ruin of familiar neighborhoods or of landmark buildings such as the Regis Hotel and National Library.

Doctors say that, like victims of war, some of those who endured physical injuries seem better able to cope than those who suffered less directly.

They say some of those not directly affected by the quakes feel guilty, impotent, angry, or suffer nightmares over what might have happened.