Maryland Trauma Specialist Brings Hope to Children

The day of the tsunami he knew what he had to do. After all, he is trained to help people through unspeakable trauma. He started making calls and it was the Maryland governor's office that led him to Catholic Relief Services. On New Year's Day he left for Sri Lanka.

Dr. Michael Finegan distributes coloring books to tsunami-affected children in Galle, Sri Lanka. Photo by CRS Staff

Dr. Michael Finegan is the lead psychologist for the Maryland State Police Department. During the month of January he volunteered with Catholic Relief Services to bring trauma counseling to tens of thousands of children in Sri Lanka, where more than 28,000 were killed by the tsunami.

Dr. Finegan spent most of his time in Galle, a city on the southern tip of the island nation that suffered more than 4,200 fatalities from the tsunami. He met with the doctors and nurses at the Karapitiya Hospital in Galle, the largest hospital in the region and site of some of the most tragic scenes in the hours after the wave hit. In total, the hospital received more than 6,000 admissions in the 36 hours after the tsunami struck, 1,300 of them dead on arrival.

Because it was impossible to meet with all of those directly traumatized by the disaster, Dr. Finegan trained religious leaders, healthcare workers and teachers to understand the unique demands placed on those working with a highly traumatized population.

Among those most traumatized by the tsunami are children who witnessed the horror. Because children are often unwilling or unable to express their grief and fears as adults do, Dr. Finegan armed himself with 20,000 drawing books and crayons from Catholic Relief Services and got to work with children and their parents in the relief camps around Galle.

"When fear becomes a major factor in children's lives, it impacts their development," Dr. Finegan explained. "Given a blank sheet of paper, and children will express fear and loss through drawing, and that helps in the process of recovery."

Dr. Finegan asked children to draw pictures of what happened during the tsunami, what is happening in their lives now and what they see in their future. Their pictures told a story of enormous loss. But most, he said, drew a future of blue skies and happy faces.

David Snyder has traveled to more than 30 countries with CRS, working in such crisis zones as Pakistan, Sudan, Angola, the West Bank and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Most recently, David visited those devastated by the Kashmir Earthquake.