1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910463558703321

Autore

Abramowitz Sharon Alane

Titolo

Searching for normal in the wake of the Liberian war / / Sharon Alane Abramowitz

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : , : University of Pennsylvania Press, , 2014

©2014

ISBN

0-8122-0993-1

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (280 p.)

Collana

Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights

Disciplina

306.09666209/04

Soggetti

Social psychology - Liberia

Postwar reconstruction - Liberia

Mental health - Liberia - International relations

Psychic trauma - Liberia

Women - Violence against - Liberia

Electronic books.

Liberia Social conditions 1980-

Liberia History Civil War, 1989-1996 Psychological aspects

Liberia History Civil War, 1999-2003 Psychological aspects

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- 1. Searching for Normal in the Wake of the Liberian War -- 2. Clusters, Coordination, and Health Sector Transitions -- 3. Trauma and the New Normal -- 4. Individual Interventions -- 5. The GBV Proxy -- 6. Ex-Combatant Rehabilitation -- 7. Redemption Time -- 8. The Healers -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Acknowledgments

Sommario/riassunto

At the end of Liberia's thirteen-year civil war, the devastated population struggled to rebuild their country and come to terms with their experiences of violence. During the first decade of postwar reconstruction, hundreds of humanitarian organizations created programs that were intended to heal trauma, prevent gendered violence, rehabilitate former soldiers, and provide psychosocial care to the transitioning populace. But the implementation of these programs



was not always suited to the specific mental health needs of the population or easily reconciled with the broader aims of reconstruction and humanitarian peacekeeping, and psychiatric treatment was sometimes ignored or unevenly integrated into post-conflict humanitarian health care delivery. Searching for Normal in the Wake of the Liberian War explores the human experience of the massive apparatus of trauma-healing and psychosocial interventions during the first five years of postwar reconstruction. Sharon Alane Abramowitz draws on extensive fieldwork among the government officials, humanitarian leaders, and an often-overlooked population of Liberian NGO employees to examine the structure and impact of the mental health care interventions, in particular the ways they were promised to work with peacekeeping and reconstruction, and how the reach and effectiveness of these promises can be measured. From this courageous ethnography emerges a geography of trauma and the ways it shapes the lives of those who give and receive care in postwar Liberia.