Letters

Assessment and Treatment of Iraqi Prisoners and Civilians

To the Editor: We read with interest the brief report by Griffeth and Bally, "Language and Cultural Barriers in the Assessment of Enemy Prisoners of War and Other Foreign Nationals," in the February issue ( 1 ). The mental health team described by the authors tried to do their best by using interpreters. However, the interpreters were not Iraqis and had little knowledge of the culture—and even had difficulty communicating.

We believe that the authors have made a fundamental error—that is, assuming that concepts of Western psychiatry as embodied in the DSM are universally valid. Western psychiatry is only one among several ethnomedical systems in the world. Western personhood emphasizes a personal and private self, whereas many cultures define a person as largely interpersonal and consensual and oriented to key roles and relationships rather than to what is deeply private. Social connectedness is a measure of value of self. In fact, among Iraqi asylum seekers in London, current social support was more closely related to low mood than a history of torture ( 2 ).

The authors are guilty of the error of "category fallacy," which is the assumption that because phenomena can be identified in different social settings, they mean the same in those settings ( 3 ). Terms such as depression and posttraumatic stress disorder and the meanings and responses that they elicit in Western societies are not directly applicable elsewhere, and many cultures do not have equivalent terms ( 4 ).

We are not sure whether it would work well for the authors to apply symptoms or even concepts of the Western world to people who may have other explanations, ranging across the physical, spiritual, moral, and political realms, and who may not conceive of illness as situated in the body or mind alone.

We also do not agree that educating interpreters in medical terminology can in itself benefit future assessment and treatment of prisoners of war and other foreign nationals unless the interpreters—or persons on the treatment team—are highly knowledgeable of the culture and of what is considered "normal" and what is not.