To help students overcome the trauma of the Nov. 25 Black Wednesday floods that ravaged parts of the Bride of the Red Sea, Jeddah Health Affairs and the Ministry of Health have jointly established three psychological support centers in the city. Salem Al-Towairaqy, head of the educational guidance department at Jeddah education directorate, told Saudi Gazette that at the beginning of this semester, support centers were set up in Ibn Hazm high school (Kilo10 District), Abi Ishaq school (Quwaizah District) and Al-Derayeah school (Kilo 14 District). The centers are manned by social and psychological specialists from the ministries of Health and Education for four hours daily and aim to deal with what experts have termed “flood phobia”, Al-Towairaqy said. The main role of these centers is to treat students psychologically for the effects of flood phobia by giving them awareness lectures and training in the way to deal with psychological difficulties, problem solving, assertive behavior, positive attitude, communication skills and self-awareness. “The positive attitude training course aims to change the thinking of students from negative to positive,” Al-Towairaqy explained. According to him, flood phobia was discovered in certain students when it was noticed that they had a marked fear of clouds and that they linked rain and clouds to floods and death. Awareness and training sessions are also given to teachers and school staff who daily deal with children who have been traumatized by their flood experiences and who suffer from flood phobia. “With the participation of psychological therapists from the Ministry of Health, we have held special workshops and lectures for teachers to explain how they should behave with flood victims,” said, Abdullah Al-Thakafi, director of Jeddah Education. Nawal Al-Tayb, manager of Quwaizah elementary school, told Saudi Gazette, “one of my students will not come to school this semester because she has been traumatized by what she experienced on the day of the floods, and the psychologist has allowed her to stay at home until she gets well”. “The student cries during the night from nightmares that remind her of the flood,” Al-Tayb said. According to Al-Tayb, students and parents still have great fear of rain and “we notice that many students are absent on cloudy and rainy days”. Specialists from the psychological support centers visit flood-afflicted families to help them release their feelings. In addition, they teach them how to relax both mentally and psychologically in order to help them forget the past and focus on the present. Support center specialists visited Mahmoud Ahmed, a father who lost two of his sons (Osamah, 6, and Hosam, 8) during the floods. They visited him at the beginning of this semester in order to help him overcome his psychological problems at a time when his two boys should have been returning to school. “After the flood, I was really suffering psychologically from losing my sons. However, after the visit of the psychologists, I feel better as they have taught me how to deal with the trauma,” Ahmed said. “The sessions included both religious and psychological treatment, such as how to be patient, how to deal with my fate and finally how to transfer my positive attitude into future action,” he said. – SG – Noura Al-Mazmomi and Alaa Al-Twaireb also contributed to the report. __
