Weekdays at 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. (10:30 NT)
Hello Q land, Peter Mitton here, producer of the Americanization of Mental Illness story on Monday's show. One thing journalist Ethan Watters brought up while discussing his new book, Crazy Like Us, struck me as particularly relevant to the Western world's ongoing efforts to help in Haiti. Watters suggested that sending trauma counsellors to disasters zones like Haiti and Sri Lanka has the potential to do more harm than good. What do you think of his argument, that different cultures understand the human psyche differently, and react to trauma differently? Do our attempts at staving off PTSD in other cultures miss the mark by imposing an American idea of the human psyche there? Should we rethink the practice of sending trauma counsellors to places like Haiti?