Page 30 - The Gazette Autumn 2023

30 The Gazette QARANC Association
several service personnel accessing me for guidance and support.
I felt that I was able to foster a sense of availability and trust. I also found it a great opportunity to get to know everyone on camp, their own roles and gain a true sense of how multifaceted and diverse a team on these operations can be.
My DCMH job sees me working in a team surrounded by mental health clinicians, so working with a wide range of people and learning how they contributed and who they were was rewarding and refreshing. It also appeared to have worked as I had hoped, as gaining feedback at the end of the deployment, service personnel stated that knowing I was available, and present had created an additional sense of stability and safety netting for themselves.
I spent a significant time supporting the medical staff in the Turkish and UK Med hospitals in assessing and managing the mental health needs of the local population. I had to learn quickly to slow down what I was asking and communicate through the translators which was awkward to begin with.
The entire UK Med team were so adaptable to the needs of the patients, and it was a great experience
The entire UK Med team were so adaptable to the needs of the patients, and it was
a great experience to work alongside them.
to work alongside them.
I needed to be mindful of the difference in how mental
health care is practiced in Turkey. We had limited scope beyond the local hospital, so I could not advise care plans that could not be maintained. Treatment plans would therefore rarely utilise medication, instead involving families present for support network interventions, normalisation of concerns, signposting, and plans for if symptoms persisted/declined and teaching grounding techniques and tools to encourage patient self-soothing.
The range of symptoms included acute stress reaction, acute grief reaction and patients with previous mental health conditions. Of the last group, I distinctly remember a 62-year-old female who, after a lengthy assessment we realised had presented with long-term psychosis. As challenging assessments go, trying to piece together the needs of a patient who has difficulty comprehending reality (during post-earthquake and communicating through a translator), is up there.
The ages of patients I supported ranged from children aged 5-6 who had become completely quiet and traumatised up to a 91-year-old great-