SRI LANKA: Decades of Strife Traumatise Sri Lankans

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Jun 10 1998 (IPS) - Even two years after a bomb destroyed the Central Bank in Sri Lanka’s capital, a bank official who survived, complains he can’t sleep or work. Images of the mangled bodies of his dead colleagues haunt him day and night.

In northern Jaffna town, scene of some of the heaviest fighting in 15 years of civil war, a four year old who has grown up with the sounds of battle, seems to not blink an eyelid even at the sound of gunfire. Unruffled he continues to play with a toy, while his parents react in anxiety and fear.

A sailor who saw dozens of his comrades die in an attack by Tamil Tiger rebels is seeking an early discharge on the basis of psychological trauma. He suffers recurring nightmares, insomnia, visions of bloodsplattered men — and nausea when he sees food.

Many of Sri Lanka’s 18 million people live in a constant state of shock as the country slips deeper into a seemingly unending civil war, say doctors pressing alarm bells about the little recognised problem of depression and trauma among civilians and soldiers.

The lack of knowledge and understanding by a majority of doctors here has meant that “psychological trauma” generally goes undiagnosed as a medical problem in Sri Lanka.

Consequently, people have had to find ways of coping with the violence unleashed by two revolts — the south is still recovering from a brutal left-wing insurgency that was ruthlessly crushed by the government in 1990.

Last week, the government imposed a ban on war reporting as a fresh offensive to retake a strategic highway from rebel hands got underway. While casualties were said to be high on both sides, little or no news was released to the public of a civil war that has been raging since 1983 in the island’s north and east.

However, there is no masking the pervading uncertain environment in Sri Lanka, even though there is a veneer of normalcy about the capital city Colombo. Here shopping malls buzz with activity, traffic snarls clog roads, vendors go from door to door, and playgrounds resound to the shouts of children.

But signs of the civil war are also everywhere. Many roads have been sealed off in sensitive areas against armed attack by Tamil rebels, soldiers armed with automatic weapons guard all government offices, and military checkpoints on the highway check all vehicles and passengers travelling to Colombo.

Despite the precautions, Tamil rebels, fighting for a separate homeland called “Ealam” for the island’s minority Tamils who they claim to represent, have with devastating effect infiltrated Colombo to target important installations, causing grievous injury, destruction, chaos and fear.

Colombo lives in constant fear of attack. “The danger is that trauma has become so much a part of our lives that we tend to take it as normal,” says Dr. D.N. Athukorala, president of the Sri Lanka Medical Association (SLMA), the country’s main body of medical practitioners.

Worried about a growing trend of stress and trauma-related ailments, the SLMA, on May 29, convened a symposium on the psychological impact of trauma in Sri Lanka and shared some alarming findings.

Most children in the Jaffna peninsula are growing up in a war environment, numbed by the violence that would leave permanent scars, the doctors said..

According to Dr. Athula Sumathipala, a Sri Lankan trauma specialist working in a British hospital, who studied the case of the Central Bank official, the 35-year-old man displays all the classic signs of trauma — fear, guilt, shame, anger and helplessness.

Dr. Sumathipala said the victim is angry and ashamed because he escaped from his devastated office. “He feels like this because he could not help his colleagues,” the doctor explained.

Yet, the doctors he went to treated him for something other than psychological trauma, impeding his recovery. The victim didn’t get back to work for eight weeks. Since he “did not recover” and suffered from nightmares, he eventually became an alcoholic, the doctor said.

Since few Sri Lankan hospitals and doctors are equipped to handle cases of trauma, often treating victims for other kinds of ailments, most patients are left to handle their own problems, worsening the situation.

Dr. Raveen Hanwella, lecturer at the Colombo University’s department of psychological medicine, said in the case of the

traumatised sailor, because he had no external injuries after the attack, doctors thought he was fine.

The sailor was sent back to the battlefront but returned in a month complaining of nightmares even during the day, and the constant smell of blood. People thought he was lucky to be alive, but didn’t realise the terrible suffering he was undergoing inside, Dr. Hanwella said.

According to the doctor, “sometimes the psychological effects of trauma are worse than losing a limb because its effect can go on and on if not treated properly.”