1 MILLION PEOPLE IN FORMER YUGOSLAVIA SUFFER FROM MENTAL TRAUMAS

ZAGREB. April 13 (Hina) - About one million people in the former Yugoslavia suffer from mental traumas caused by war, which demand help, a World Health Organization (WHO) official, Dr. Hannu Vuori, said in Zagreb on Thursday. At the same time there are skilled therapists available to offer help to merely 5 per cent of the cases, he said while presenting a WHO annual report on the health condition in the area of the former Yugoslavia in 1995. "The chief consequences of the war were increased depression and aggressiveness with people, a WHO expert for mental health, Dr. Milan Kosuta, told the conference. The difficulty lay in the fact that people inflicted by such states would pass their psychic problems to their children. According to estimates, around 200,000 people died in Bosnia- Herzegovina so far in the war, and at least 600,000 members of their families were stricken by their deaths. The grave psychological strain was caused also by such specific problems characteristic for the Serbian aggression on Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina as mass ethnic cleansing, mass rapes, abuses and atrocities and destruction on a larger scale, more and more refugees and internally displaced people, and long staying in cellars and shelters. Dr. Kosuta said Croatian psychologists found that number of suicide had been increasing in certain areas of Croatia. The WHO was carrying out 190 projects of psychological rehabilitation in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, he added. Dr. Vuori warned that there 40,000 invalids in the former Yugoslavia were recorded so far, and 25,000 of them were in Bosnia- Herzegovina, who needed medical therapy. (hina) mms 131820 MET apr 95