Back in 2010 a humanitarian agency asked me to go to Haiti following the devastating earthquake, they (the NGO not the Haitians) needed psychologists. Having been to Haiti a decade earlier, I would have loved to return. Yet, we know from research that in the aftermath of a natural disaster psychologists have little to contribute: survivors need to go through the natural grief process and the vast majority will not develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Social support and time will heal their psychological wounds. So I decided to stay home: I feared that Haiti would be inappropriately invaded by grief counselors, and I simply didn't want to be one of them.
In the same year an earthquake struck Yushu on the Tibetan Plateau. I had been visiting the area in 2009 and when the earthquake hit I spoke with the representative of an aid agency: "I don't think it's a good idea to send psychologists" I said. Sure enough he replied: "We must help, we have to do something". A therapist with years of field experience carried out an assessment finding that the deeply Buddhist Yushu community did not need our psychologists. Her report remained unheeded. The agency sent western counselors.I was in Sichuan following the 2008 earthquake and a Chinese colleague told me that many of those who survived the natural disaster spoke with contempt of western psychosocial programs. What people feared the most after the earthquake were "theft, fire and psychologists" she said. And I'm not sure it was necessarily in this order.
When an earthquake hit the region of Abruzzo in Italy in 2009, I advised the psychosocial manager of an NGO to recruit Chinese counselors. He didn't think it was appropriate. Why not? If an Italian psychologist can fly off to China and provide therapy, why not the other way round? The neocolonial mentality is sometimes so engrained in parts of the aid sector that we fail to notice our paternalism: "we" can help "them", but how on earth can you think that "they" can help "us"? To me my presence in Sichuan was as fit as the presence of a Chinese psychologist would have been in Abruzzo.
Now it's Nepal. What I'm about to say may sound selfish to the naive and zealous ear, I'll say it anyway: please let's not rush in with well-meaning psychosocial programs. At least not just yet. People are resilient and will process their grief in ways that work within their own worldview, a worldview with its traditions and rituals, with its understanding of death and (re)birth, with its interpretation of human suffering. Let's help where needed, but let's not get in the way of people's healing process. We need to put our ego and our desire to be there aside and for once do things differently. Nepal's natural disaster is not an opportunity for voluntourism, or an escape from personal problems, or a way to fill up the void in your life. In my view this equally applies to improvised do-gooders and to humanitarian professionals whose presence may not be essential.
Sometimes the best way to do no harm is not to intervene. Instead let's make sure that the staff who are out there get some decent support and care from their agencies. Just to avoid that they themselves will be in need of a psychologist once they return home.
The author is a psychologist and Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Oxford (Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict)
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