twrama 1841_august_2.. - AMA WA

FOCUS
Could we be ADDING
fuel to
the fire? Tragic:
In early July, arsonists set fire to the historic
Mount Lawley Primary School.
by Dr Michael Gannon
Vice President AMA (WA)
In the early hours of Sunday 8 July, as my wife and I made
our way home from the AMA (WA) Awards Dinner, a trio
of teenage arsonists set fire to our daughter and son’s historic
100-year-old school.
A few short hours later we were at a hastily convened
meeting of parents and teachers at the local high school.
We were promised by the Mandarin from the Education
Department that professional counselling services would be
made available for our children. I started to wonder exactly
how appropriate trauma counselling was.
Certainly my mother was very upset, having seen the school
she attended in the 1950s reduced to ash. The anguish on the
faces of the Headmaster and teachers was most distressing,
with years of resources and hard work shamefully and
criminally incinerated in less than an hour. But does trauma
counselling really help five to 12 year-old-children? Could it
actually harm them?
When the World Trade Centre fell in September 2001, an
army of nearly 10,000 psychologists, counsellors and social
workers descended on New York City to help the survivors.
The evidence would suggest that the process of ‘debriefing’
i.e. encouraging the survivors to re-hash their trauma in many
cases provoked rather than prevented Post-traumatic Stress
Disorder (PTSD).
The patients that many of us see each week who came
via refugee camps in the Horn of Africa do not need to, nor
wish to re-live their personal experiences of the horrors of
famine, war, rape, poverty and dislocation. They have reached
Australia, often after many years of waiting, and now given
safe refuge, they have time to recoup and rebuild their lives.
The response of the Government, the Education
Department and my local community has been phenomenal
with a temporary school assembled in less than a fortnight,
ready for the new school term. The important role that
counsellors, GPs, psychologists and psychiatrists play should
not be denigrated. People trying to help should be praised for
their efforts, not criticised.
But maybe the counsellors should stay away and let the kids
enjoy their new playground, their brand new pencil cases and
their exciting new adventures. It is not enough to announce
that you are ‘here to help’, especially if you might actually be
causing harm.
16 MEDICUS August