Daren Dixon, the lone survivor of Saturday’s fire, can expect a lifetime of misery if he does not get professional help soon.

Clinical psychologist Dr Krishna Maharaj said Dixon, like any normal person who goes through such trauma, can expect to experience acute stress.

Dixon’s wife, Vanessa Chinapoo, 32, who was eight months pregnant, died along with the children, Sarah Chinapoo, 13; Chayim Chinapoo, 10; Moses Chinapoo, 8.

Also killed in the fire at Mc Bean Village, Couva, were Dixon’s niece Shantelle Dixon, 22, and her nephew, two and a half year old Elijah Narine.

Relatives said Dixon was so traumatised by the incident he was inconsolable, and had to be treated for acute stress and high blood pressure.

Dixon has said he was awakened by two of the children who told him the roof of the home was burning.

He said he told his wife and two boys to flee the home and went looking for the others.

Dixon said he could not find the other family members and escaped through a side door, believing they had all got out safely. It was only later he realised they had all died, found later by fire fighters in a death embrace in the bathroom.

Maharaj said of Dixon’s mental state: ’It will be acute stress disorder until about six months but he needs to have some sort of counselling now to reduce the onset of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).’

Maharaj said, ’he needs to know that there are professionals who know and understand what he is going through and that he is not alone’.

Dixon’s family, he said, should also go to the counselling sessions with him.

’Family members should also take part in family counselling sessions as a means of support,’ Maharaj said.

Maharaj said minor tranquilisers should also be prescribed to help Dixon to deal with the sleepless nights he is sure to continue to experience, along with several other symptoms of acute stress.

These he said include irritability-reacting to people that may remind him of the incident - depression, reliving the incident every time he hears or reads about similar incidents and reoccurring dreams about the incident.