Professional psychological help should be available to the general public in the immediate aftermath of crises such as the Manila hostage tragedy, say doctors.
At a seminar on psychological care yesterday titled 'Lessons Learnt from the Manila Hostage Incident', clinical psychologists said the tragedy had been traumatic not only for those directly involved, but for the many more who watched the drama unfold live on television.
'It affects not just the victims and their families but also the many observers through the media with such vivid and continuous images broadcast live on TV,' Sally Leung Wing-wah, an educational psychologist with the Education Bureau, said.
Leung said that since the incident, in which eight Hong Kong tourists were killed on August 23 in the full glare of live media broadcasts, psychologists in the bureau had discussed what could be done to address its impact on mental health in the community.
'We estimated that many ordinary people who have no intimate relationship with the victims may still feel unhappy after witnessing with their own eyes how lives can be lost in the blink of an eye,' Leung said.
Although schools were in the middle of summer recess at the time of the incident, the bureau immediately contacted and advised school heads across the city that they should identify students at risk of psychological problems and refer them to social workers or clinical psychologists when classes resumed a week later.