LDS relief: Mormon social workers help Haitians with grief, anger

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Chris Anderson and Paul Garrett are well aware of the gamut of emotions the Haitian people are going through now in the wake of the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake in their island nation.

The Haitians are grieving. They're scared. They're confused. And they're angry.

And Anderson and Garrett know Haitians will be recycling through those feelings many times in the coming weeks and months, as they work to rebuild their emotions as much as their city and country.

The two men are licensed clinical social workers who accompanied the 14 volunteer doctors and nurses that provided medical care to injured and ailing Haitians during the past eight days as part of a medical team sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

For the medical volunteers, the wounds they treated were either visible or easily discernible.

For Anderson and Garrett, who both work for LDS Family Services, they know there are strong feelings percolating behind the broad Haitian smiles.

"They've lost family members, many have lost homes," said Anderson, a Draper resident whose full-time job is working for LDS Family Services with the church's full-time missionaries at the Provo Missionary Training Center. "But you can't see their heart. The earthquake was so devastating, maybe the smiles were their only response."

Garrett, of Charlotte, N.C., said the international relief effort — whether it be providing food and supplies, medical care or communications — should provide an emotional foundation for Haitians to build upon.

"When people come into an area and provide a presence, it gives hope that people care," he said.

Mental and emotional health specialists responding in times of disaster are nothing new — Anderson arrived in Indonesia about four months after the deadly December 2004 tsunami. There and then, he didn't just deal with families and friends of the victims, but he spent most of his time training local specialists in knowing how to help their own people deal with the varying disaster-related emotions.

In Haiti, Garrett and Anderson have helped not just the masses in general but local LDS priesthood leaders who are supervising relief efforts and trying to aid local church members. While none of the key leaders died in the quake, they are like other Haitians in losing family members, homes and employment. They have to help themselves as well as the members.

"We're trying to help them be able to empathize and listen to feelings as well as to accept the emotional hardships that they are going to go through," Anderson said.