Firefighters are making progress on containing the wildfires that have been raging for weeks in Southern California. But even once the physical threat of the fires diminishes, the mental-health toll will linger for months and even years, experts say. With thousands of people evacuated and homes destroyed, rebuilding people's social and psychological resources is one of the next pressing challenges.
Mental-health crisis centers are already seeing a surge in wildfire-related calls from the Los Angeles area. Here's what experts say survivors can expect as they process their experiences, and the resources available to them.
"A real intense sense of uncertainty"
The national mental-health help line, 988, says they saw a five-fold increase in the number of calls from the Los Angeles region from Jan. 7, when the fires began, to Jan. 15. “We did a brief analysis of what people are talking about, and the predominant emotions people are experiencing are fear, grief, and a real intense sense of uncertainty,” says Tia Dole, a psychologist and chief 988 suicide and crisis lifeline officer. “For California, this is the beginning of the wildfire season—this isn’t the end. So what’s going to happen next?”
Dr. Shairi Turner, chief health officer at Crisis Text Line, a national mental-health support network that provides mostly text-based support and resources, says that texts from Los Angeles County have increased over the first few weeks of the year compared to the same time last year. Most of the discussions involved stress or anxiety. Counselors have been helping people struggling with the uncertainty of not knowing if they will be evacuated, feelings of isolation, and grief of losing their homes or having their lives interrupted with no practical plan for resuming daily activities. Some have also reported having difficulty with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as the current blazes trigger memories of previous fires and evacuations.
Read the full article at TIME.
