Urhobo Historical Society

OIL SPILLAGE
IN NIGERIA'S NIGER DELTA


INTEGRATED GRASS ROOT POST-IMPACT ASSESSMENT
OF ACUTE DAMAGING EFFECTS
OF CONTINUOUS OIL SPILLS IN THE NIGER DELTA
JANUARY 1998 - JANUARY 2000
 
 

PSYCHO-MORPHOLOGICAL & EMPIRICAL OVERVIEW


PRIMARY AUTHORS/RESEARCHERS:

DR. E. A. AKPOFURE

CHIEF M. L. EFERE

DR. PROSPER AYAWEI


4.0  ASSORTED PHOBIC AND ANXIETY DISORDERS AND THEIR EFFECTS ON IMPACTED VICTIMS

PHOBIC AND ANXIETY DISORDERS





It was obviously evident by our person to person and group interviews with some of the impacted people, that most of them in the areas were experiencing several phobic disorders, by reason of the persistent feeling of threat of climaxing starvation and negligence from MULTINATIONAL OIL COMPANIES and their collaborators.
 

Several phobic disorders (fears) were noticed from the victims who were diagnosed, viz: identifying objects and/or circumstances harmful to them, thus generating a sudden unpredictable panic stricken attack of intense fear or terror causing chest pains (heart attack) dizziness, fainting, paralysis etc.
 

On further investigation and diagnosis, we observed several anxiety disorders amongst the impacted individuals. Victims were observed to have been perplexingly neurotic and schizophrenic, they have no logical premises to refer to than to conclude from their over whelming experiences. Below are some highly identified and diagnosed cases by our psycho-krenein analytical team. Viz.
 

4.1 AGORAPHOBIC DISORDER

We also noticed several distorted perception of life, increased in-appropriate behavioural dispositions, an intense paralyzing fear of danger and AGORAPHOBIC TENDENCIES: like the fear of being totally abandoned and/or neglected by MULTINATIONAL OIL COMPANIES and their collaborators.
 

4.2 Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

As the name implies, it is clearly related to some original (past) stressful events experienced by the individuals that had graduated to this current disorder. Indeed on our sampling and rigorous data collation, it was noted that they had painstakingly lived through several previous traumatic (shocking, injurious) experiences as a result of past oil spills most of the spills were not compensated.
 

4.3 Obsessive - Compulsive Stress Disorder
 

We also diagnosed the above symptom of involuntary and consistently compelling, harmful and suicidal thoughts or ideas re-occurring in several minds despite their attempts to stop them because of severe loss of income and property and uncertainty of the future.
 

4.4 Somato Form Stress Disorder

We noticed some serious bodily disorders like, back pains, dizziness, partial paralysis of glove Anesthesia (convulsive stress disorder) abdominal, urinal pains etc. without any physical evidence of organic cause.
 

4.5 Hypochrondriasis

This was another form of Somato form disorder that was diagnosed in the victims, as interpreted on interview, that some victims had small cuts likely to be from their farming operations but could not explain how they came about those cuts and so attributed these injuries to be mysterious cuts likely to have come from the angry gods who were annoyed because of pollution of sacred environment, bio-diversity and used this means to express their offenses. These melancholy symptoms were noticed to have been persistent even though there was no evidence that they reflected serious illnesses.
 

4.6 Affective Stress Disorder

This disorder was noticed to have been characterized by serious dehumanization by MULTINATIONAL OIL COMPANIES had caused psychological imbalance in the affective domain and emotional state of the people and invariably distorting their psycho-motive and cognitive domains as well.
 

We noticed that most of the people had a wide affective range of being earnestly happy in Hillarie environments and/or consistently Melancholic (Sad) with little regard to their lives. Furthermore, what we discovered (and perplexingly noticed) was the abnormal inconsistency of victims from one end of the psychological range of happiness to the other extreme of self pity, empathy, clinical depression and even some form of Bipolar disorder.
 
 

Proceed to RESULTS OF PSYCHO-MORPHOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS


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