Students often throw up or wet themselves when gunfire erupts outside their school in northern Port-au-Prince. When they do, school director Roseline Ceragui Louis finds there's only one way to try to calm the children and keep them safe: getting them to lie on the classroom floor while she sings softly. “You can’t work in that environment,' she said. 'It’s catastrophic. They’re traumatized.
At a recent training session in a relatively safe section of Port-au-Prince, parents learned games to put a smile on their children’s faces. The parents are often so distraught and discouraged they don’t have energy to care for the kids, said Yasmine Déroche, who trains adults to help children overcome trauma inflicted by persistent gang violence.
Jean Guerson Sanon, co-founder and executive director of Gèrye Jwa Playmakers, stressed the importance of parents interacting daily with children to boost their mental health. “Sometimes, that’s all we have,” he said, noting that conversations about mental health remain largely taboo. “If you go see a psychologist, it’s because you’re ‘crazy,’ and ‘crazy’ people are really discriminated against in Haiti,” he said. At the training on a recent Sunday, parents learned games for their children.
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