"I always have nightmares about being chased by something black, a shadow," says doctor Sotheara Chhim, describing the aftermath of peering into the dark places most Cambodians are trying to forget. "It is not something clear, but it is probably relevant to the Khmer Rouge," says Chhim, one of only 26 psychiatrists providing care for a rising tide of Cambodians who are no longer able to cope with the damage caused by the brutalities of the past. "I listen to so many stories. I dream about being in a kind of trap, a cage," says Chhim, himself a survivor of the apocalypse that engulfed Cambodia in the late 1970s, explaining the personal toll exacted by confronting, again and again, other people's demons. Chhim, who directs the Transcultural Psychosocial Organization (TPO), one of the country's few mental health facilities, warns that worse could be yet to come as a genocide tribunal forces Khmer Rouge victims to re-live atrocities inflicted by the regime. But the psychological fallout of the trials only highlights a much broader need for mental health services in one of the region's most traumatized countries. "The incidents of mental illness are getting higher from year to year, but still a lot of psychological problems are not being cared for," says Dr Ka Sunbaunat, dean at the University of Health Sciences and director of the National Programme for Mental Health. Some 30 per cent of Cambodia's nearly 14 million people reportedly suffer from a debilitating mental condition –from anxiety and chronic unexplained physical pain to unpredictable mood swings or sudden eruptions of rage.
