Former hostages on verge of suicide

Moscow doctors try to help desperate mothers, who lost their children in Beslan

Ten former hostages from Beslan arrived in Moscow on Thursday on board a plane of the Russian defense ministry and were hospitalized to Serbsky's State Scientific Center in Moscow (the central psychiatric hospital in Russia). Doctors say that each of those people, who experienced the nightmare of the hostage crisis in Beslan, were on the verge of suicide. One of the former hostages committed suicide, when she came back home from the stormed school. Psychiatrists say 132 other victims of the horrific terrorist attack need to be hospitalized urgently, the Kommersant wrote.

Ten leading specialists of the Serbsky's Institute left for North Ossetia soon after the end of the hostage crisis. The doctors rendered first psychological aid to those, who survived the storm of the Beslan school.

”Our specialists work at hospitals and at funeral ceremonies,” the institute's director Tatiana Dmitrieva said. “Unfortunately, we have lost one woman. She committed suicide when she identified her dead child,” Dmitrieva said. Psychiatrists are deeply concerned about a possible series of possible suicides to occur. “It is not time for mass suicides, - senior psychiatrist of the Russian Healthcare Ministry Boris Kazakovtsev said. – An outburst of suicides usually starts a month or two after an emergency situation ends.”

Moscow doctors and psychiatrists working in Beslan determined that 142 people need to be hospitalized to mental hospitals urgently.

Ten of the above-mentioned former hostages were housed in the four-storied building on the territory of Serbsy's Institute. Five boys from eight to sixteen years of age were accommodated in one room, a 16-year-old girl and her mother live in another room. Three women share the third room: two mothers and a teacher of the Beslan school. Doctors provided the children with various toys, books and posters. There is a small kitchen in the house – women can cook for their children, if they wish so.

Doctors thoroughly examined the patients immediately after their arrival. They were all diagnosed with severe stressful reaction or reactive depression. The young teacher, named Angela, lost her only child several years ago. When the woman saw the death of tens of children with her own eyes, she experienced a very strong stress. Specialists say that the woman's previous depression returned, having increased tenfold. The woman has a splinter under her skull's skin – surgeons will have to perform a small operation on her to take it out.

Twelve-year-old boy Soslan was taken to Moscow with symptoms of autism. The boy was not showing any reactions for several days. He was looking at everyone with a glassy look, swinging on the chair all the time. Today the boy asked to go outside - it was the first time, when he did not scream at night.

Doctors are very glad for eight-year-old boy Amazat. After the first consultations with doctors, the boy asked, when he was going to be taken to a Moscow circus. Amazat said he would love to see clowns.

”The patients experienced positive reactions from their move to Moscow. However, we do not know, how they will react, when the first impression of the new city and the new environment goes,” institute's director Tatiana Dmitrieva said. First and foremost, the doctors will try to make the patients release the state of fear. “We are very afraid of the terrorists. We saw them running away. There were several of them and they can return to us,” one of the former Beslan hostages said.

Interfax, meanwhile, reports that seven-year-old boy Beklastan Khudalov, who was seriously injured in the terrorist act in North Ossetia, died on Friday overnight at a hospital in Moscow. The death toll thus reached 327.