A total of 20 students from the quake-hit Mianyang City of southwestern Sichuan Province began a summer camp in Shanghai on Wednesday.

The students would receive some professional psychological assistance during their ten-day stay at the camp, the first stage of the summer camp.

"Psychological theories have it that memories people feel reluctant to recall would become fragmented. More severe trauma is indicated by more fragments," said Wang Feng, a professor with the Psychology Institute of the East China Normal University.

"We hope our activities would help them speak what they feel inside so as to put the pieces together," said Wang, who would give face-to-face tutorship to the students.

About a month after a mental trauma occurred is universally regarded as the optimal time for psychological intervention on children.

Eleven tutors would be dispatched to accompany the students 24 hours a day in a bid to offer proper help, said Song Zheng, president of the Goodbaby Group, the sponsor of the summer camp.

Statistics about each student would also be captured by a certain psychological intervention model, he added.

Song said the students would come back to Shanghai for the second-stage of camp life in August, and for the third phase, psychologists would go to them to carry out follow-ups, which would last a year.

These students were five-grade pupils, at about 11 years of age, from the same school, the Tumen Town Primary School in Mianyang, which is meant to make it easier for later follow-ups.

The camp was the first to kick off after the Ministry of Education called on colleges outside the quake zone to organize summer camps for quake students last week.

(Xinhua News Agency June 18, 2008)