Supporting Mental and Public Health Prevention Work in Atrocity Settings

A discussion at the intersection of public health, mental health, and mass atrocity prevention in the U.S. and globally.

In August 2021, Caitlin Mahoney, Associate Professor of Psychology, published the edited book, "Public Health, Mental Health, and Mass Atrocity Prevention," in partnership with Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum, Amy E. Meade, and Arlan F. Fuller. The multidisciplinary volume considers the role of both public health and mental health policies and practices in the prevention of mass atrocity, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The authors address atrocity prevention through the framework of primary (pre-conflict), secondary (mid-conflict), and tertiary (post-conflict) settings. They examine the ways in which public health and mental health scholars and practitioners currently orient their research and interventions and the ways in which we can adapt frameworks, methods, tools, and practice toward a more sophisticated and truly interdisciplinary understanding and application of atrocity prevention. More info about the book can be found at:
https://www.routledge.com/Public-Health-Mental-...

The Digital Dialogue series brings the volumes authors together in dynamic conversations. Professor Caitlin Mahoney will moderate this, the third dialogue in the series, which examines ways to Support Mental and Public Health Prevention Work in Atrocity Settings, leveraging the regional and case expertise of discussants.

Purchase Public Health, Mental Health, and Mass Atrocity Prevention here.

Speakers include:

Dr. Majd AlGhatrif is an Assistant Professor at John Hopkins School of Medicine. He joined Johns Hopkins as an Assistant Professor of Medicine in 2012 with a concurrent appointment at the Head of Human Cardiovascular Studies at the Laboratory of Cardiovascular Science, National Institute on Aging. He holds academic interests in hypertension arterial stiffness, arterial-ventricular coupling, and heart failure with preserved systolic function. AlGatrif is is the co-founder of Syriana Cafe in Elliott City MD, a space designed to share Syrian culture, food, and art with the community. Through the creation of the Syriana Cafe, AlGhatrif gained a passion for crisis-related public health issues that inform his medical research.

Nuwan Jayawickreme is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Manhattan College. His research focuses on cultural models of posttraumatic stress disorder and major depressive disorder, predictors of psychological well-being in populations affected by war, cross-cultural assessment of psychological constructs, and the construct validity of posttraumatic stress disorder. He is also a licensed psychologist in the state of New Jersey.

Erin K. McFee, Ph.D. is a political anthropologist and Fulbright Scholar. She received her doctorate in Comparative Human Development at The University of Chicago. Her research analyzes interpersonal trust and development interventions in violent contexts and focuses on former members of non-state armed groups and other conflict-affected actors. She has conducted and led research in Colombia, Mexico, El Salvador, Lebanon, and Somalia. Her most recent co-edited volume, Ex-combatants and the Peace Accord with the FARC in Colombia: An Early Balance (Spanish), presents an interdisciplinary investigation into the first year of implementation of the reintegration component of the 2016 Peace Accord in Colombia. She is the UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) Latin America and Caribbean Centre (LACC) as well as the Principal Investigator for the ACHR-funded peacebuilding and trust "Violence, Security, Peace Network."

Caitlin Mahoney (moderator) is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Metropolitan State University in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Mahoney is a social psychologist, whose research focuses on empathy, emotion, and responses to suffering. As program evaluator for the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities (AIPG), she helps local and international organizations more effectively deliver on their missions to promote human rights and social justice. Mahoney has a Ph.D. in Social Psychology, with a concentration in peace and conflict, from Clark University.