The Sandspur

Issue date: 4/22/05 Section: News

Media Credit: COURTESY OF ROLLINS.EDU

Dr. Kathryn Norsworthy, Ph.D. spoke April 14 of her efforts in providing counseling to traumatized victims of the Tsunami disaster this past December. Having been a member of counseling efforts in the South East Asian area since 1997, Norsworthy had the upper hand in this relief effort of knowing the culture of the area and being able to gain the trust of the people, after taking years to earn it.

Norsworthy focused her attention, this time, on the areas of South Thailand that were greatly affected by the Tsunami. Many of which, she says sadly, are still not receiving the relief efforts needed to rebuild their cities and homes to this day. Norsworthy, along with a group of about eight individuals, four from Burma and four from Thailand, began their counseling about forty days after the Tsunami had occurred.

Since she had worked with the people of that area in the past, Norsworthy assumed her group would go in and do the normal workshop routine, a more formal approach to counseling. However, when she got there, she realized she would have to build her routine from the ground up, calling on the needs of the cultures they would be working with. Norsworthy says of this: "The only certainty is that you show up and it's not as you plan. You just have to hit the reset button and regroup."

The first thing Norsworthy and her group would do when they got to a certain village would be to get an idea of what it had been like for the individuals who were affected by this trauma. By doing this, they would sit down with a group and talk through the issues. Due to the collectivist nature of the individuals in this society, as the people had received the help they needed, they would quietly get up and leave, leaving those who really needed the most help.

With the group of individuals left, usually containing those who had been directly affected by the tsunami, Norsworthy and her group worked with them to allow them to work with each other and become peer counselors for the other members of the group. With these individuals, Norsworthy's group would work on a deeper level and try to meet their specific needs due to the traumas they have encountered.

Then, after a two to three hour block of discussion, Norsworthy would begin debriefing, to take a break from focus on what was going on around them. This helps to relieve the tension and stress accompanied with reliving and dealing with issues of this magnitude.

Continued...

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