North Texas psychiatrist traveled to site of Turkey-Syria earthquake, helping survivors with mental health struggles

By ERIN JONES

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    COLLEYVILLE (KTVT) — It’s been about a month since a devastating earthquake hit Syria and Turkey. The death toll is now sitting at 50,000.

For the past two weeks, a local psychiatrist was on the ground, helping survivors with their mental health.

“Seeing things in person always brings things into perspective,” Dr. Nora Abdullah said. “So many people are sleeping in tents only because they don’t know when the next earthquake will happen. They don’t know if they can even go home to a place that could potentially fall to the ground.”

The Dallas-based psychiatrist said she saw the toll it’s taking on mental health.

“Most people that you would see in Turkey or Syria now are just terrified,” she said.

Working with the nonprofit MedGlobal, she joined other doctors to provide support.

For her, this trip was personal.

“As a Syrian-American I feel very drawn to this,” she said. “I have been following the Syrian conflict for so long. The average person in that area has been displaced five or six times, some people report at least 10 times.”

During her two weeks working in disaster zones, she did as much as she could.

“We were able to go to different hospitals,” she said. “We were able to see different patients that were on the floors. To be able to offer a fraction of what they need was very rewarding. If we’re able to address the mental health issues head on and with as much support as possible, some people that might experience regression.. or that might experience any sort of negative consequences to what they went through.. if addressed properly, can actually go through some growth.”

She said a two-week trip was not nearly enough time.

“I mean there’s only so much you can do as one doctor or in our case three psychiatrists,” she said.

That’s why they trained more than 100 people on how to address mental health issues.

“We trained them in childhood trauma, skills for psychological recovery and re-traumatization, human trafficking and made sure that they, together, collectively took this information and were able to teach it to others, were able to intervene when needed,” she said.

She said if there’s an opportunity to return, she’ll take it.

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