Paper short abstract:

This paper will present an outline of my research surrounding the expansion of post-emergency clinical mental health services in Tohoku, Northern Japan, after the unparalleled catastrophic events of March 2011. It will ask: how are experiences rendered commensurable in disaster mental health practice?

Paper long abstract:

Psychological humanitarian aid highlights the belief that experiences in one place are commensurate with experiences in another through the production and reproduction of legitimate scientific authority, making previously unknown disorders visible and quantifiable in ways commensurate with global scientific discourse.

Understanding the effects of disasters on mental health is highly complex and notoriously difficult to study, as disasters are at once collective and individual experiences. The work of local and international psychiatrists, psychology students, researchers, and humanitarian actors does not by itself prove the success and applicability of any treatments. Simply inserting diagnostic criteria into new terrains - diagnostic procedures that rely on questionnaires and surveys developed in other countries - serves to produce a common language intelligible across domains without necessarily taking into account the existing social or cultural situation. Differences are rendered equivalent. These practices appear to suggest that after an event, not only is everybody equally susceptible to mental illness, but that the experiences would be more or less uniform and predictable. Furthermore, the experience of local researchers and clinicians is often considered a challenge to authoritative or more experienced international humanitarian coordinators.

Thus, the need to produce universal, standardised assessments of health and wellbeing is driven both by international institutions and the individuals who put the most relevant and up-to-date diagnostic criteria to use. The question I want to raise, then, is how can the experiences of survivors be made comparable in ways that retain their cultural specificity?