
Lorsqu'on ajoute à l'horreur... Sur le site du L.A. Times:
Naoko Sugimoto has heard the news through the nation's fledgling mental health grapevine, ominous reports of suicides in the region devastated by last month's magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami.
It's a trickle she fears may soon become a river: the farmer who hanged himself, distressed about a cabbage harvest ruined by radioactive fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant; the overworked government worker near the complex who took his life; the father who killed himself after a fruitless search for his child after the tsunami.
"I feel sorry for these people in the same way I do for those who died in the tsunami," said Sugimoto, 67, who heads a national suicide support group, Izoku Shien. "But they didn't die in the tsunami; they died afterward. They took their own lives. And that makes you ask yourself, 'What could we have done?'"
As Japan rebuilds from the March 11 disaster, public health officials worry that a lingering sense of hopelessness among those affected might lead to a surge in suicides in a nation already coping with one of the developed world's highest rates of self-inflicted deaths. They have created suicide hotlines, pumped more money into therapy programs and sent more suicide counselors into the field as they wait and worry.
In the coming months, as those displaced by the quake and tsunami seek to move on with their lives, the true gravity of the disaster will slowly sink in for many, say government officials, aid organizations and mental health workers.
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