It would not be the first time that psychological aid was regarded by non-Western recipients as a kind gesture but a bad fit. For the last 15 years or so, humanitarian workers have been exporting the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder and trauma counseling around the globe.
They have rushed in to impose Western "debriefing" - a group therapy technique intended to get victims to express their feelings about a horrific event and to relive it as vividly as they can - without regard to the needs of the victims, their natural healing systems or their very conception of what mental illness might be.
One reason I didn't fit in well when I took a psychiatry rotation among rich yuppies is that I was not sensitive enough to feel they needed psychiatry. I did okay with the REAL mentally ill-- the schizophrenics or severely depressed, for example...
And EVERY culture has ways to cope...often using religion and ceremonies.
The Navajo, for example, held a "sing" ceremony for the codetalkers.
And Catholics always had confession, with imposed penance-- which in the middle ages might include working with the poor in a monastery or going on a pilgrimage...
After 9-11, we saw this type of healing in the many shrines that sprung up in Manhattan, and at the many Catholic funeral masses...
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