COUNTYWIDE : Therapists to Help Hurricane Victims

Two Orange County therapists will spend the holidays in South Florida to help survivors of Hurricane Andrew, which decimated the area last summer.

Judy Albert, a Huntington Beach marriage, family and child counselor, is leaving today to help hurricane survivors deal with anxiety, depression and other disorders.

“I want to try to help heal the psyche of people who have been traumatized to prevent further deterioration in family relationships and inter-personal relationships,” said Albert, 47, who has been a therapist for 16 years and plans to stay in Florida a week.

Dr. Judy J. Anderson, a clinical psychologist from Irvine, plans to spend a week in Florida after Christmas.

“The more we can reduce the psychological stress, the more people there will be able to rebuild the community,” said Anderson, 44, who has been in practice since 1979.

The two have been recruited by Dr. Ruth Knowles Grainger of the Therapy Research Institute in Miami.

Grainger said she is the only psychotherapist in South Florida who is trained in a procedure called eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, or EMDR, a treatment that has offered rapid relief from such symptoms as anxiety and nightmares, which are normal after catastrophic events.

Grainger said she became overwhelmed by the psychological needs of survivors after Hurricane Andrew struck in late August. “The stress is enormous, so many people are affected,” she said.

In response, Grainger has set up a nationwide disaster team of therapists.

Grainger said free EMDR treatment is being offered at four locations, including Homestead, which was one of the hardest-hit communities.

She said bringing in the volunteer therapists has been a grass-roots effort. The professionals are not paid and sponsors, including car rental companies and airlines, have stepped forward to help.

Grainger said the EMDR procedure, which is controversial and experimental, involves the use of specific and repetitive eye movements, similar to those experienced naturally in rapid-eye-movement sleep. It was developed in the late 1980s by Dr. Francine Shapiro of Palo Alto and has been taught to about 2,000 licensed psychotherapists worldwide.

“My goal is that we lower the risk for suicide and post-traumatic stress disorder, which can disable a person for life,” Grainger said.

For the Orange County therapists, the hope is that through helping the hurricane survivors by using the procedure, the follow-up research can be used to assist people here if a major earthquake or other disaster hits this area.

“We’ll have more concrete information to more effectively treat disaster survivors,” Albert said.

Anderson said she has found the therapeutic procedure helpful in a person’s recovery from a major disaster.

“In terms of dealing with sudden trauma, it makes all the difference in the world in terms of a person’s recovery,” she said.

And for Albert, who has used EMDR on victims of the Los Angeles riots and people who were raised in alcoholic or dysfunctional families, leaving for Florida on Thanksgiving Day gives the cause an extra special meaning.

“I’m thankful for my health and well-being,” she said. “It’s a pay-back. God’s been good to me in my life.”