The Emotional Impact of Disaster on Children and Families

In most cases, expressions of emotional impact are transient and children go progressively back to normal activities. However there are cases that require referral to a mental health professional.

Mental health professional intervention has the following goals:

• To offer the child a safe setting where he/she can talk about his/her feelings and emotions with respect to the situation he/she is undergoing.
• To prevent the symptoms from becoming chronic and interfering with everyday performance.
• To implement the needed measures to lessen the potential impact on the developing personality of the child.

Refer if the child presents:

• Suicidal thoughts or suicidal ideation.
• Symptoms that persist for more than 1 to 3 months and interfere with everyday life.
• Aggressive behavior, threatening his/her own or other people’s life.
• Behavioral school problems that interfere with acceptable functioning.
• Persistent (longer than 1 month withdrawal behavior that interferes with social life.
• Frequent nightmares that persist over time.
• Frequent outbursts of anger, annoyance, explosive behavior.
• Persistent (longer than 1 month) somatic complaints.
• Avoiding behavior or anxiety symptoms that interfere with everyday life.
• Alcohol or substance abuse.
• Preexisting problems and risk factors which should be taken into special consideration, since traumatic situations can reactivate previous conflicts with over-whelming effects. 

Some communities lack a formal mental health system or are overwhelmed by the needs of the populace. In these instances, innovative community-based treatments can be effective.

The pediatrician can also help mental health professionals by describing local idioms for emotional symptoms, and cultural patterns of distress as well as local stigma associated with mental disorder treatment. The pediatrician should inform parents that many individuals have chronic emotional disturbance after disaster, but that treatment is helpful. The pediatrician can also be helpful to mental health professionals by identifying suitable volunteers in the community. Mature individuals who are motivated, adapting well, and trusted within the community can be trained by mental health professionals to help implement community-based programs.