Craig L. Katz – författare

Disasters! Looking beyond their acute impact to how they affect communities in the years that follow is the focus of discussion in this issue of Psychiatric Clinics. Reviews of cases of well known disasters such as 9/11, the 2004 South Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the Haiti earthquake of 2010, the 3/11/11 "triple disaster" in Northern Japan, and others are presented from the perspective of local experts who have been asked to take a long view of what they learned and may still be learning from their post-disaster experiences that mental health professionals faced with future disasters should know. World renown experts in disaster psychiatry and global psychiatry, Craig Katz and Anand Pandya, lead this publication.

Spurred in part by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which turned nearly all mental health professionals into de facto disaster mental health professionals—this second edition of Disaster Psychiatry remains a clinically oriented, evidence-based, and practical guide to mental health evaluation and interventions against the backdrop of adversity.

Disaster Psychiatry: Intervening When Nightmares Come True captures the state of disaster psychiatry in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. This emergent psychiatric specialty, which is increasingly separated from trauma and grief psychiatry on one hand and military psychiatry on the other, provides psychotherapeutic assistance to victims during, and in the weeks and months following, major disasters. As such, disaster psychiatrists must operate in the widely varying locales in which natural and man-made disasters occur, and they must establish their role among the chaotic array of organizations involved in direct disaster response. Editors Anand Pandya and Craig Katz have captured the challenge and promise of disaster psychiatry through first-person narratives. We hear from psychiatrists who have encountered disasters at various stages of their career and in widely varying social, political, and personal contexts. Accounts of psychiatric involvement with adults and children during and after 9/11 have understandable pride of place in this collection. But they are balanced by richly informative narratives about other domestic and international disasters. Fraught with the drama attendant to the events they describe, these essays delineate the dizzying array of challenges that confront the disaster psychiatrist. They range from the intense emotional responses that are part of the aftermath of any disaster, to the need to legitimize a psychiatric presence within diverse cultural and medical contexts, to the subtle task of providing therapeutic boundaries at a time when all rules seem to be suspended. Special attention is given to the daunting task of working with children whose parents' are disaster victims. What emerges from these testimonies is compelling documentation of skilled and compassionate psychiatrists at the outer limits of their specialty, pursuing their calling into uncharted realms of therapeutic engagement.

Disaster Psychiatry: Intervening When Nightmares Come True captures the state of disaster psychiatry in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. This emergent psychiatric specialty, which is increasingly separated from trauma and grief psychiatry on one hand and military psychiatry on the other, provides psychotherapeutic assistance to victims during, and in the weeks and months following, major disasters. As such, disaster psychiatrists must operate in the widely varying locales in which natural and man-made disasters occur, and they must establish their role among the chaotic array of organizations involved in direct disaster response. Editors Anand Pandya and Craig Katz have captured the challenge and promise of disaster psychiatry through first-person narratives. We hear from psychiatrists who have encountered disasters at various stages of their career and in widely varying social, political, and personal contexts. Accounts of psychiatric involvement with adults and children during and after 9/11 have understandable pride of place in this collection. But they are balanced by richly informative narratives about other domestic and international disasters. Fraught with the drama attendant to the events they describe, these essays delineate the dizzying array of challenges that confront the disaster psychiatrist. They range from the intense emotional responses that are part of the aftermath of any disaster, to the need to legitimize a psychiatric presence within diverse cultural and medical contexts, to the subtle task of providing therapeutic boundaries at a time when all rules seem to be suspended. Special attention is given to the daunting task of working with children whose parents' are disaster victims. What emerges from these testimonies is compelling documentation of skilled and compassionate psychiatrists at the outer limits of their specialty, pursuing their calling into uncharted realms of therapeutic engagement.

Drawing on the authors’ experience in developing and implementing global mental health programs in crisis and development settings, A Guide to Global Mental Health Practice: Seeing the Unseen is designed for mental health, public health, and primary care professionals new to this emerging area.The guide is organized topically and divided into four sections that move from organizing and delivering global mental health services to clinical practice, and from various settings and populations likely to be encountered to special issues unique to global work. Case studies based around a central scene are threaded throughout the book to convey what global mental health work actually involves.Mental health professionals of all backgrounds, including social workers, nurses, nurse practitioners, psychologists, and psychiatrists, as well as public health professionals and community level medical professionals and mental health advocates will benefit from this engaging primer. It is the book for anyone committed to addressing mental health issues in a low resource or crisis-hit setting, whether international or domestic.

Drawing on the authors’ experience in developing and implementing global mental health programs in crisis and development settings, A Guide to Global Mental Health Practice: Seeing the Unseen is designed for mental health, public health, and primary care professionals new to this emerging area.The guide is organized topically and divided into four sections that move from organizing and delivering global mental health services to clinical practice, and from various settings and populations likely to be encountered to special issues unique to global work. Case studies based around a central scene are threaded throughout the book to convey what global mental health work actually involves.Mental health professionals of all backgrounds, including social workers, nurses, nurse practitioners, psychologists, and psychiatrists, as well as public health professionals and community level medical professionals and mental health advocates will benefit from this engaging primer. It is the book for anyone committed to addressing mental health issues in a low resource or crisis-hit setting, whether international or domestic.

Stigma still surrounds suffering from mental health problems, and in most low-resource settings in "developed" and especially the "developing" world, this prejudice is compounded by an utter lack of resources to address these problems. The class of mental health problems is the greatest source of morbidity worldwide compared to all other categories of health problems and is also the most neglected. The difference between the vast mental health needs worldwide and the scarce resources that address them is known as the "mental health gap." This book portrays this gap through the story of two men suffering from schizophrenia and clinical depression in an unnamed low-income country. At the same time, it portrays how "there" can be "anywhere" by providing glimpses of the mental health issues of a relief worker’s mother back home.This book relies on the stories of Sam and Berko to bring alive the mental health gap and raise awareness of the all too often "unseen" presence of mental illness throughout the world, a problem that contributes to enormous suffering and disability without ever showing up on an X-ray or in blood tests, let alone in public discourse. The book aspires to educate on the mental health gap by showing rather than telling and using narrative rather than epidemiology and statistics. It will inspire mental health professionals to apply their craft outside of customary areas of mental health practice; policy makers and government planners to better allocate protections and resources to mental health problems; the public to advocate for change; and everyone to reflect on the sources of our distress and our contentment.