Canberra families affected by Mr Fluffy asbestos could take several years to recover psychologically and needed the community's patience and understanding when they were suffering acute stress and anxiety.
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Clinical psychologist and disaster expert Dr Rob Gordon said there were many parallels between the families affected by the Canberra bushfires and the Mr Fluffy crisis.
Yet he said the very nature of asbestos – invisible to the eye and unable to be detected in small quantities – made it an insidious psychological enemy.
"It is a hidden threat, it is invisible and the timeframe of harm is uncertain – it makes it very difficult to make sense of or to come to terms with, unlike a fire which is extremely visible."
Dr Gordon is being brought to Canberra by the Asbestos Response Taskforce to run a community forum for Mr Fluffy victims on June 3, having spent 30 years on the front line of counselling in crisis and emergency situations – including helping Canberrans after the 2003 firestorm.
He also likened Mr Fluffy to the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in the United States in 1979 – where the psychological effects of potential exposure to nuclear radiation was recorded to be far more endemic than the physical effects.
"Thirty years after the disaster, there was an epidemiological study which showed there was no increased health effects due to radiation – but there was a significant increase in the stress of worrying about it."
Heavy burden for parents
He acknowledged that the threat of exposing children to a known carcinogen would be a heavy burden for parents to bear.
"Every parents worries about their child and feels responsible about their health and wellbeing, so this does add another layer of stress. Parents need to try and separate tragic circumstances with personal intention. Being paralysed by guilt is probably not good for any child's development."
Furthermore, he believed parents needed to try and protect their children from the worst excesses of their personal distress.
"Children at any age can understand that terrible things happen, but it is so important to try and establish a sense of normality and to focus on the recovery process and not on the event. I would say that parents need to manage their own fear, as children's reactions are highly related to how their parents respond. They don't need to hide their distress from their children – but don't show them the full gamut of emotion and try, where possible, to preserve some sense of normality."
Dr Gordon understood there was an added layer of trauma because 1021 families had to leave their homes – either voluntarily or involuntarily in the case of those who could not afford to buy back and rebuild on their land.
"Moving home after losing a job, death or divorce, ranks as one of the highest stressors in life … But these people are already experiencing acute stress because their home is contaminated and it was never their choice to move."
Those who chose to cut their losses early and move on were more likely to be able to re-establish their mental health earlier that those who chose to stay and fight the government.
"It depends on what your focus is – some people will put their emotional wellbeing ahead of their material wellbeing. But there is bound to be grief over the involuntary loss of home, loss of life story and loss of life history. It is tragic for all concerned."
'Too much' for those already struggling
Dr Gordon said for some, the stress of the situation would prove too much for those already struggling with problems.
"In any population, you would expect a proportion of affected people to experience overload and serious difficulties. The important thing is not to generalise that to mean that just because someone has gone into crisis that it means I will too. Everyone can think about what they need to get through the stress of the recovery period until a new life is established."
On Friday, NSW Police arrested a Mr Fluffy homeowner experiencing an acute mental health crisis in Martin Place.
The psychological impact of the Mr Fluffy crisis will be measured as part of a two-year study by the Australian National University's Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health.
Lead researcher Dr Martyn Kirk said a focus group of affected residents would explore "some of the issues around social distress and psychological effects – whether they are health related or financial."
Both Dr Gordon and Dr Kirk believed more people would need to access medical referrals and counselling services when the list of Mr Fluffy addresses became public.
Counselling services are currently available to Mr Fluffy victims through the taskforce.
Dr Kirk said it could be that as many as 10,000 Canberrans will have suffered some level of exposure to Mr Fluffy since the toxic insulation was installed in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s.
With an average latency of between 40-50 years, he believed any increase in cancer rates would not be apparent for around a decade.
Currently, between 6-10 Canberrans die from mesothelioma each year.
