Psychology student launches free mental health platform for quake victims

As natural disasters are followed by various mental health issues, the earthquake-affected areas of southeastern Türkiye and northwestern Syria will be no different. 

A postgraduate psychology student from Istanbul’s Bogazici University identified the need of creating a database to make earthquake victims reach psychological support easier, faster, and free of cost.

With the help of her brother, she created www.psikologbul.io, a platform that contains information of mental health professionals who voluntarily provide in-person or online psychosocial support to earthquake victims and their relatives affected by last week's deadly tremors. 

“There were lots of medical teams to provide psychological and psychosocial support in the earthquake areas, but many victims had to leave those areas while their need of support remains.” says Hatice Seyma Kara to TRT World.

As the rescue operations are ongoing, various needs of earthquake survivors have arisen, and a very vital one is giving them psychological support.

“Several institutions and professionals also announced that they will provide free support across Türkiye, but it is really hard for the victims to find and access them easily. At this point, we thought that a database combining them in one place would make the process much easier,” she adds.

Once reaching a number of psychotherapists who are willing to give free psychological support, she designed a website with the help of her brother Ahmet Bugra Kara, who is a web developer.

It took them only two days to write a code, design a webpage and test it. 

The website currently includes more than 300 mental health professionals from around Türkiye and the number is likely to increase.

All the applicants are required to have trauma-disaster training in the field of mental health and each one of them is vetted before added to the database. 

READ MORE: 'Are we going to die?': Trauma haunts children who survived Türkiye quakes

There are at least 2,072 mental health professionals deployed to the earthquake zone and an additional 791 personnel who are remotely providing mental support to the victims, according to the Turkish authorities. 

In the past eight days, more than 195,962 people have been evacuated from the quake-hit regions, according to the country's disaster management agency, AFAD. The number of relocated people will be rising in the coming weeks.

“We are waiting for more mental health professionals and institutions to apply for volunteering because there is still a huge need for psychological support, and it will continue,” says Kara.

The magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 tremors last week were centered in Kahramanmaras and struck nine other provinces – Hatay, Gaziantep, Adiyaman, Malatya, Adana, Diyarbakir, Kilis, Osmaniye, and Sanliurfa.

As of Feburary 14, the death toll of earthquake victims has reached 31,974. More than 13 million people have been directly affected by the disaster.

READ MORE: A guide to emotional healing after Türkiye's earthquake disaster