The damage that hit the Valencian regions on October 29 has left an emotional fracture that is difficult to repair. The impact of the flood, which directly caused 229 deaths, thousands of rescues and an undetermined number of health care services, is difficult to calculate. There is no concrete data that can quantify the suffering of the more than 300,000 people who reside in the regions where rivers and ravines overflowed. There are people who have lost family and friends, others who spent tremendously distressing hours, others who witnessed the tragedy, others lost their homes, belongings, all material traces of their memories. Thousands of them continue to reside in municipalities where reconstruction is still far away, towns that, a year later, still bear the imprint of the mud present. All of them have wounds waiting to heal, personal marks that overlap with a collective mourning.
Emotional discomfort is visible in any population in the metropolitan area. The neighbors are tired, sad, angry. They fight to move forward with their lives while remembering their losses. In some cases, the situation is extreme and requires immediate attention. This is what happens to JO C, a neighbor of Sedaví, who went into “shock” during the disaster and over time developed symptoms compatible with anxiety: she began to feel “a pain in her chest that got worse, so I finally decided to make an appointment at the family doctor, who simply gave me a Diazepam.” He has not received psychological or psychiatric care from the Valencian public health system, as detailed below.
The Ministry of Health and the Generalitat Valenciana have transferred some care data in recent weeks, a balance that tries to approximate the situation. Its information includes the most urgent care, cases of crisis or pathologies. The Ministry led by Mónica García announced in December the launch of emergency units to mitigate the psychological impact of dana, with 42 professionals assigned. They started working on the ground two months ago and, according to their data, they have already performed 500 services.
In some cases, the pain has taken a while to come out, as in the case of Miguel, a police officer from Valencia who lost his home and rescued 14 people from a residence, who explained that it was almost a year later, upon reliving it, when he became aware of the emotional impact. Other residents of l'Horta Sud say that they have had nightmares after several months. For others, the emotional blow came in the summer, with vacations, when resting. There are relatives of victims who have been on leave since then. The anniversary of the flood, like any anniversary of a traumatic moment, is a blow.
Minors, especially vulnerable
Minors are a population especially vulnerable to catastrophe. Data from the Generalitat Valenciana indicate that they have treated 560 minors in l'Horta Sud, 20% with suicidal tendencies, according to the person responsible for Mental Health at a press conference. A good part of Valencian youth has been experiencing extreme situations for five years, starting with the Covid pandemic of 2020, and the damage is a particularly strong blow. The different Health departments have prepared manuals with advice on how to deal with extreme situations with minors, which can be consulted in the link on these lines or on the website of the Ministry of Health.
Javier Sarabia is a psychologist and coordinator of the National Congress of Psychology Students in the city of Valencia, which this year focuses on the impact of DANA. From his five years of experience working with children, he highlights that the flood represents a before and after in their development: “Although you cannot put a label on it with a diagnosis, it is shocking to see the way in which it has influenced them. It is a recurring theme, they talk a lot about the issue of dana. They are afraid. You notice it in lack of attendance when it rains, they are afraid of the rain.” “There are children who have lost everything. There are institutes destroyed and those kids are teaching in an improvised school, with 30 barracks one on top of the other,” he says. The professional reports that there are minors who are “fully aware” of the damage: “They say that their grandparents' house has no furniture, that they have lost photographs… They talk about massive material loss and death with a normality that is frightening. They are processing something that came to them suddenly. They have gone through a very traumatic situation and although they do not develop symptoms, their perception of safety and reality changes a lot,” he highlights.
Experts highlight the importance of reconstruction and social support: “If a year later you have nothing, what therapy is going to help you?”
For Sarabia, who is an expert in volunteering, reconstruction plays a fundamental role in emotional recovery. “Those who have had a human and material loss are not hopeful. They feel institutionally abandoned. That a year later there are houses in that situation is an institutional abandonment. Many are not aware of the social implication and do not understand how it is possible.” Sarabia is very critical of the slowness and lack of response from the Public Administration: “Feeling supported by your society, by your government, goes a long way. Children who live a more or less normal life have a different attitude than those who live with their grandparents. The discomfort can already be seen. The question is how their situation evolves. If a year later you have nothing, what therapy is going to help you?”
However, the need for mutual support networks, both neighbors and volunteers, stands out. “The important thing is that there is a support network, a strong network. That they do not feel isolated, abandoned and a social response according to the situation. The citizen response has been much more decent,” he points out, citing as an example initiatives such as Adopt a Senior, a network that helps request social benefits and with volunteers and donations buys furniture or hires bricklayers to renovate damaged homes. The initiatives will be presented at the Faculty of Psychology in a conference that starts on October 29.
“Health denied me assistance, the only solution the family doctor gave me was to take a pill”
JOC is 37 years old and is a neighbor of Sedaví. On October 29, he miraculously saved his life. When he saw that the water began to enter his house, he had the impulse to try to get the car out of the garage, a decision that luckily he was able to rectify in time, to get to safety: “I lost the house and the car, but the fact that both I and my family's lives were saved was a relief since in the end, within the tragedy, the material damage can be repaired.”
However, after that first relief, he says that he was shocked “to see that in the first days after the flood no members of the different security forces came to help.” After the first few days of removing mud from the house and the streets, I began to notice “a pain in my chest that got worse, so I finally decided to make an appointment with the family doctor, who simply gave me Diazepam, a high dose for me who had never taken that type of medication, so I didn't want to take it because my house was destroyed and I would have stayed asleep all day.”
After a few weeks, his emotional situation was getting worse: “I couldn't stop crying and I didn't want to get out of bed. I went to the family doctor and asked for an appointment for consultation with Mental Health, but it was denied without any explanation. It was getting worse, I couldn't stop crying, but luckily I reacted and thought that if the dana hadn't killed me, the postadana wasn't going to kill me. Thus, given the lack of response from Health, I had to find my way to receive psychological help. free, since the damage from the flood and the lack of agility in collecting aid and from the Consortium, which has not yet paid me, made it impossible for me to pay for a psychologist.”
Thus, searching on the Internet, he found the reference of the YMCA association of psychologists that offered between 11 and 12 free sessions to those affected by dana, but when he exhausted them, he returned to the health center, asked again for a referral to mental health, and was again rejected. In exchange, they recommended that he go to the Emergency Mental Health Unit (Usme) recently opened by the Government.
“I had a meeting with them, they are a team that helps people affected by dana. Since then they have been taking me along with a free psychologist that the Sedaví City Council has arranged. They are complementary supports, for different emotional issues. From my experience and from other people I know, the support that is being sold in Mental Health for victims from the Department of Health is a lie, or it is that they are overwhelmed and cannot take on more patients. As far as I know, there is only one psychologist here for this entire area of Sedaví and Alfafar. The only solution they give you is to get a pill and without the supervision of a psychiatrist. If you don't look for life like I did, you are lost,” he laments.
Psychological and psychiatric assistance is a pressing need for hundreds of neighbors like JOC. Post-traumatic stress usually takes a year to emerge, experts say, a starting line that is about to be drawn. But those affected by dana don't just need someone to listen to them. A hopeful story is crucial for emotional recovery after the flood. Also, as the victims point out, the need for truth and justice to begin reparation. But without material recovery, without a project to build, the rest remains suspended.