Dr Michael Tan, the GP whose surgery in Ardoyne's Flax Centre tends to many of the families affected by the loyalist protests, said some of the families were now at "breaking point" and many people in the local community were in desperate need of professional psychological care.
He expressed particular concern about the lack of provision of professional psychological services. The nearest full-time child psychologist to Ardoyne is located in the loyalist Shankill area and the next nearest was on the Falls Road. The Catholics from Ardoyne would feel in danger attending the psychologist in the Shankill area and would have to travel in Belfast city centre and then up the Falls Road with their children.
The Eastern Health Board has located its Family Trauma Centre at Wellington Park in the Malone area of Belfast. The Malone area has lowest incidences of social deprivation and disorder in the city.
Dr Tan said: "There is a really serious imbalance between community psychological services for north Belfast. The south and east (Belfast area) have very little problems but all the services."
What counselling services were available, Dr Tan pointed out, were provided by the office manager of the Flax Centre surgery and by Sisterr Kathleen Savage at her office on the Ardoyne Road. There are no counsellors or psychologists on permanent Health Board contract working in the area with the Holy Cross families.
Children as young as five, who had to be treated with sedatives to get them through the initial week of violent protest, are now beginning to display signs of long-term suffering. Dr Tan said: "It has got worse. The number of patients that are coming through is escalating week after week after week." He said the most common forms of suffering among children were bed-wetting, nightmares and flashbacks.
No comment was available from the Department of Health yesterday. The board referred an inquiry from The Irish Times to the North and West Belfast Health Trust which, by that stage, had closed.
In recent weeks some of the Glenbryn loyalists have taken to wearing Hallowe'en masks that, in the highly fraught circumstances surrounding the children's walk to school, are very menacing for the children.
Yesterday several of the protesters were wearing masks including some in the ghoul masks of the type worn in the Scream horror film series.
One of the protesters displayed a letter threatening local Protestants from a group calling itself the Catholic Reaction Force. This cover-name has been used by republican terrorist groups in the past.
In the past two weeks protesters have also thrown water-bomb balloons filled with urine and, Dr Tan said, this had caused some children to have to be brought home to be changed and then forced to pass along the same route again to get to school.
Yesterday the Holy Cross mothers reacted angrily to the appearance - five weeks into the daily ordeal of protests - of the head of the North's Human Rights Commission, Prof Brice Dickson, and the fact that he spent time talking to the protesters rather than the parents.
Ms Sharon McCabe, whose eight-year-old daughter attends Holy Cross, said: "My child has been absolutely terrorised, called all the names of the day. I have been called a slut, a whore and Fenian bastard. I have been spat upon, and nude photographs thrown in my face. They threw balloons filled with urine, dog excrement and this man (Prof Dickson) is supposed to be coming here to see about human rights and he never came near one parent." Other mothers pointed out that during Prof Dickson's visit yesterday afternoon the loyalists mounted their most peaceful protest to date.
Another mother, Ms Philomena Flood, became angered when Prof Dickson returned through the military and police cordon and could be seen speaking to loyalist protesters.
Ms Flood said one of the women he was speaking to had thrown a firework at the children last week and had shouted obscene abuse at the Holy Cross priest, Father Aidan Troy, who accompanies the families each day.
Prof Dickson said he had been at Glenbryn before but did not say why he had not accompanied the families going to school, or if he felt there was a pressing need to help the Holy Cross families. "There are a whole series of pressing needs, terrible things happen every day," he said.
Talks between the Glenbryn Residents' Association and their counterparts in Ardoyne took place on Tuesday night and are continuing with the assistance of local politicians and the Northern Ireland Office.
However, there was no indication yesterday of an ending of the protests.
The North's Security Minister, Ms Jane Kennedy, said a security wall would be built between the Protestant Glenbryn Park and Alliance Avenue in the Ardoyne area, but rejected a suggestion that a permanent gate be built across the families's route. along Ardoyne Road to Holy Cross School.