January 12, 2010 - As we're bombarded daily with the unending stream of news of fresh catastrophes from around the globe, sometimes it seems like natural disasters take place almost round the clock. I first learned the news about the devastating earthquake in Haiti as I was getting ready to make my sixth visit to Sichuan Province, the site of the 2008 earthquake in China. My colleague Elaine Miller-Karas and I had been going there regularly since the quake to provide training in our biologically-based Trauma Resiliency Model (TRM), which focuses on teaching nervous-system stabilization skills for trauma survivors to local physicians, nurses, counselors, teachers, and first responders.Once in China, we’d watch the coverage each evening of the Haiti disaster, in which an estimated 230,000 or more people died. read more . . .

While visiting a displaced persons camp, a young woman, Marie, a survivor of the Haitian earthquake, recounts in Creole that she has not felt well since the earth erupted and changed her life forevermore. She reports that she has insomnia, stomach discomfort and headaches and often feels a weakness in her legs. She feels her heart beating too fast and is exhausted all the time. Her feelings fluctuate and she is riddledwith despair, guilt, anger, sadness, grief and shame. She further states that she is forgetful and feels confused about the present and the future. read more. . .