In the corridors of a Caracas hospital, the British medical aid team’s arrival is met with something unexpected: not trauma wounds, but panic attacks. The city’s populace, worn down by months of political upheaval and shortages, has found a new outlet for its stress. The emergency room, once the domain of gunshot victims, now sees rows of patients clutching their chests, gasping for air.
This is not a bomb blast in the physical sense, but a psychological one. The human cost of Venezuela’s crisis is shifting from the tangible to the internal. Social psychologist Dr.
Elena Torres, who works with the aid teams, notes: “When survival itself becomes a daily battle, the mind can only take so much.” On the street, the mood is brittle. A woman selling vegetables confides that her son, aged 17, had his first panic attack last week.
“He thought he was dying. But perhaps that is what our country is doing, slowly.” The British team, trained for cholera and fractures, now finds itself listening more than operating.
They are witnessing the cultural shift from a society in collapse to one in chronic anxiety. The aid coordinator, Mark Henshaw, says: “We expected physical needs. We did not expect this… this mass of fear.
” In the waiting room, a man in his fifties sits alone, his hands trembling. He whispers that he no longer sleeps. “I hear bombs in my head, even when there is silence.
” The hospital runs low on sedatives; the queues lengthen. This is the new normal in Venezuela: a nation not just broken, but psychologically dislocated. And as the medical teams assess the damage, they realise the biggest challenge ahead might not be rebuilding buildings, but rebuilding minds.
