China Deals With Trauma In Quake's Wake

Recovery Process Is Just Beginning For The Survivors Left Behind

(CBS)  It's play that's also therapy -- kids brought together by trauma experts so they can help each other slowly overcome the pain of loss.

"I still cry for my friends who died," young Dandan tells CBS News correspondent Barry Petersen.

For the first time in its history, China has mobilized mental health experts to be side-by-side with reconstruction workers in the earthquake zone. It's a recognition, says Professor Shen Heyong, that ignoring trauma can be fatal.

"Suicidal thoughts, suicidal behavior is normally - usually happens after this kind of trauma," Heyong says.

Dr. Hou's challenge is children who are too young for words to express their fears. So their play in the sandbox is also about psychology.

Little Zun relives the past, pouring sand onto his toys for the falling rubble that killed his father. "I want to go to heaven too," he said, "to be with him."

Generally, Dr. Hou tells us, kids recover faster than adults. And if they show us their emotions in the sandbox, we can offer them a safe environment.

Therapy has helped Zhihao see life as safe again. He calls his sandbox creation a happy day where butterflies live free.

But for some grownups, it's still too soon.

In a country that imposes a policy of one child per couple, when you lose that child in the rubble, you lose the centerpiece of your family. For many who went through that, the healing has just barely started.

Juyuan Middle School is a shrine to sadness.

Fourteen-year-old Rui died here. Her father and other parents are under pressure to be quiet about the collapse of so many government-built schools, so we hid his identity.

"We want an investigation," he says, "to redress this injustice."

For some, a child is a guarantee that parents will have someone caring for them in old age.

To replace that, the government will now start paying families who lost their only child about $145 a year and will allow them to have another child, replacing the one that died.

Rui's father and mother can't even think about that.

"Nothing can replace our child," her father said.

Rui often said she wanted to be a teacher and grow up to make her parents proud. Now, so many young lives filled with hope and love are lost. And for their parents, neither time nor therapy may ever bring them peace.