NEW DELHI: The Northeast Delhi riots left several people in a mental health crisis and it was important to provide psychosocial support to these victims, a report by NGO Karwan-e-Mohabbat has concluded.
The riots compounded people’s sense of social exclusion with families facing severe poverty, double displacement, grief, betrayal and trauma, the report titled ‘Chronicling Truth, Countering Hate: Violence and state action in North-East Delhi in February 2020’ observed.
Children who witnessed the violence exhibited passive trauma. Some, as young as three, compulsively drew images of burning houses when asked to draw.
They lost their sense of familiarity, including ‘family, home, hope, and friendship’, the report said. It mentioned anecdotal evidence of a child saying how she could never return home again.
Given the scale of this mental health crisis, it was important to provide psychosocial support with other relief efforts, the report said.
It was crucial to provide community-based holistic emotional support by complementing psychosocial care with entitlements, it said.
The report that chronicled the violence and its aftermath observed the high impact of trans-generational trauma that this event may have.
It often leads to the trauma getting embedded in not only the minds of survivors but also their children and grandchildren.
“When people experience a trauma of this intensity, they share a collective memory of the fear, loss, and betrayal it caused, and this becomes the community’s heirloom,” the report said.
The efforts to support survivors should include due financial compensation, livelihood rehabilitation and legal justice, alongside mental healthcare with timely intervention.