Paper short abstract:

This paper explores mental health responses to the 3/11 disaster in north-eastern Japan from the point of view of providers, and the ways in which professionals situate the practical value of care work within the broader social context and normative scientific discourse.

Paper long abstract:

The 3/11 tsunami and nuclear power plant disasters in Japan have led to complex mental health service responses. Whilst theoretical literature and policy guidelines suggest susceptibility to and the experience of mental illness is relatively uniform and predicable, it is acknowledged that disaster-related mental health measures often lack clear goals -both in the eyes of policy makers, and practitioners- making evaluating outcomes difficult.

The Japanese mental health community is reluctant to put into force clear evaluation measures, for fear they will increase stress on an already traumatized population and raise ethical issues in the collection of personal data. As a result, the national government, which covers most of the costs associated with responding to severe disasters, is unable to evaluate how effective mental health activities have been. This may put continued funding in jeopardy.

From an STS perspective, drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with mental health professionals in northern Japan, this paper will question whether challenges in program evaluation of disaster mental health activities result from a 'scientific deficit' in the mental health field in terms of producing normative outcomes, and how the legitimacy of numbers is resisted or accepted by those whose authority depends on expert judgment, character, or informal knowledge. In a region with severe economic and social changes due to the disasters, job losses and forced relocation, might the role of disaster mental health services be incommensurate with central government directives, or indeed is care itself resistant to normative practices of evaluation?