According to the Geological Survey of the US Government it reached a magnitude of 6.3 Richter scale destroying the town and many old villages which surrounded L’Aquila causing the death of 300 people and the wounding of 1,500 and other 65,000 people were forced to leave their homes and join emergency camps.
Before and after the big earthquake hundreds of tremors hit the town and the surrounding area which burned to the ground one of the most prestigious and historic town centers of Europe causing one of the biggest disasters ever seen in Europe.
The survivors of this disaster started having panic attacks and were emotionally disturbed.
My intervention was done in a situation of real emergency which prevented planning of controlled clinical study but I believe that it may be of interest as a communication to the medical community. The chaotic situation and the mass migration of the inhabitants did not permit to collect statistic data about the number of the patients treated, nor number results about efficacy of the homeopathic drugs administered. The treatments were given to children who presented symptoms of acute psychological trauma: earth tremors still alive in the minds of those who had experienced them, had left feelings of fear, pain and bitterness for the loss of the loved people and personal effects.
All the typical reactions that can develop after exposure to any traumatic event had been witnessed after the earthquake: “Fight – Flight – Freezing”. In some of the people there was an evolution from a stage of acute Panic attacks to chronic PTSD. With this initiative we wanted to avoid this progression. Parents told me that even if their children, who played seemingly calm during the day, at night, remembering the shocking event became whiny, pressed against their mothers and had nightmares. Children need a parent who acts as a “Mirror”, a model to imitate, to rely on. But if parents can’t help because of their difficulty to keep their emotional balance, children will take longer to get over the first stage, where nightmares and flashbacks always remind them of the tragic scenes. If after 4 or 5 weeks they are not able to work out the stress, they might develop a post traumatic stress syndrome, with consequent regression, loss of acquainted parameters (language, control of the sphincters, etc.).
Fear is a natural and understandable reaction and, like every symptom, has an important function (alert, recovery stimulation of balance lost, etc) if it is limited to the period immediately after the traumatic event. By suppressing it, it can prevent or delay recovery. The trauma has not to be removed, but integrated into the daily life, without being intrusive. If not short in time, it may cause psychosomatic reaction of anxiety, and turning into dissociation, borderline personality or even psychopathic.
Therefore Homeopathy, leads to the recovery of body and mind homeostasis and, without inducing toxicity and addiction, can precede or support drug treatment and/or Psychotherapy.
I had already started working on the organization of children’s aid since the early hours after the quake, when Dr Simonetta Bernardini, scientific coordinator of the sanitary project of the Medicine Hospital Department of Pitigliano (south Tuscany) and president of Italian homeopathic association of integrated medicine (SIOMI), entrusted me with the distribution of homeopathic remedies for fear-related symptoms generated by that dreadful experience.
The initiative was supported also by Tuscany Region, with AIFA and Italian Civil Emergency authorization. Remedies were made available by the French Laboratoires Boiron.
A team of SIOMI homeopaths decided to choose three drugs for that particular health emergency: Arnica, Gelsemium and Ignatia, with all therapy instructions related to them.
The drugs were given to many children and adults, quickly after the earthquake and during the following weeks.
Many people have regained their balance and courage to get back to their normal lives thanks to homeopathic therapies.
I administered Arnica 30 CH potency for physical and mental traumas, Ignatia 30CH potency for bitterness, restrained pain, Gelsemium sempervirens 30CH potency for fear revealing itself with inhibition, neurovegetative reactions, sadness, incapability of weeping, trembling in the limbs, anxiety, emotional diarrhoea, problems in falling or staying asleep, restlessness, anger, weakness. Gelsemium, remedy of the “Fight” stage, has been the most used and requested after the earthquake by children as well as adults who related that they felt no longer the trembling in their limbs and belly, the motor and emotional block caused by fear. Children were calmer, they had no more nightmares and were not as morbidly attached to their mothers as before. They asked for the “magic potion” in sweet granules to be melt in their mouths.
All those I had the opportunity to talk to, told me that they felt a change in their way of dealing with fear. It was still there, but they felt themselves no longer numb with fright, dreading that they might not have enough time to run away if there would be an earthquake as the one occurred on 6th April. In my view this is the therapeutic aim to be pursued through the homeopathic treatment: not to erase an event or an emotion from our memory, but to change our way of facing it so that the resulting reaction won’t create sufference but only “experiences” which let us grow inwardly in good and bad fortune.
The coincidence of the effect noted in our experience on the field of earthquake and the evidence accumulating in rigorous laboratory studies on this remedy, is particularly provoking and stimulating for future controlled studies.
The inspiration to communicate this experience came out from the reading of a study by Prof. Paolo Bellavite published in Homeopathy (2009).
The authors wondered whether Gelsemium, which proved to be effective in anxiety-like behavior in rodents might work also with men (1, 2). I agree with him about the necessity of conducting appropriate clinical studies and his positive results encouraged me to report my experience that is similar to what has been reported by M Oberbaum in his work done in Israel.

REFERENCES

1. Bellavite P, Magnani P, Zanolin E, Conforti A -Homeopathic Doses of Gelsemium sempervirens Improve the Behavior of Mice in Response to Novel Environments. eCAM 2009; doi: 10.1093/ecam/nep139.

2. Assays of homeopathic remedies in rodent behavioural and psychopathological models Bellavite P, Magnani P, Marzotto M, Conforti A. Homeopathy 2009, 98: 208–227.

3. Homeopathic treatment in emergency medicine: a case series. Oberbaum, R Schreiber, C Rosenthal, M Itzchaki – Homeopathy (2003) 92, 44–47, 2003 The Faculty of Homeopathy.