EUROPE/ITALY-One earthquake child victim out of six still feels the earthquake within them, a feeling of helplessness and horror

L'Aquila (Agenzia Fides) - After two years of work, between data collection, screening and in-depth health examination including neuropsychiatric visits to children and adolescents from Abruzzo who lived the experience of the earthquake on April 6 which hit L'Aquila in 2009, the first research in the area ever to be conducted in the world, gives scientific evidence of scars that the children exposed to natural disasters live with. The survey was sponsored by the Camiliani Order of Servants of the Sick, with the scientific coordination of the Pediatric Hospital Bambino Gesù, the support of Caritas Italy and the cooperation of the Italian Abruzzi pediatricians who voluntarily joined in the research, involving about 1,800 children (both from Aquila and from the rest of the region): 550 aged between 3 and 5 and over 1,200 between the ages of 6 and 14. The latest studies carried out by experts from Bambino Gesù Children's Hospital with Italian Caritas and Camilliani were presented in a two-day conference entitled "Children and natural disasters: what mental health?" experts from all over the world met in Rome and in L'Aquila and brought their experiences and discussed the possibility of applying the scientific model of analysis and intervention performed in Italy, in other areas of the world affected by earthquakes, such as Haiti, Japan or Southern Spain. (AP) (Agenzia Fides 04/06/2011)