Published by: Good Weekend

Reading Time: 15 mins

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At age eight, Daniel couldn’t swallow food: How climate disasters take a toll

Flashbacks, phobias and panic triggered by the smell of smoke, the sound of wind or the sight of a puddle: the trauma of bushfires and floods leaves a very particular psychological trail of destruction. And with cases of “disaster brain” on the rise, families are struggling to deal with the fallout.

Sitting down one evening in 2009 with her eight-year-old son, Daniel, while he practised his maths, Fiona Leadbeater tried not to let her emotions show. “You know this,” she blurted as he struggled to remember what to do. But he couldn’t. In the months since a devastating firestorm ripped apart their home in Kinglake, Victoria, he’d lost all memory of his three-times-table.

A cruisy kid before the Black Saturday fires, Daniel was now edgy and prone to panic attacks. Any extreme of weather would set him off: rain, wind, hail, fog. He also went on to develop a baffling phobia of swallowing, of all things……

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