Outside The Asylum

Over almost twenty-five years Lynne Jones has been working as a humanitarian psychiatrist, treating those whose mental health has been affected by war or genocide or unimaginable natural disaster, often in communities where clinical mental health treatment is on the margins, or simply does not exist. In some of the most dangerous places in the world, where huge numbers are dying or physically incapacitated, it is easy to ignore the mental wounds suffered when being forced to watch as members of your family are murdered, or when a place that you've always thought of as safe is destroyed; the feeling of helplessness as you watch your community being torn apart, or all your worldly possessions carried out to sea.

From her training in one of Britain's last asylums, to working with traditional healers in Sierra Leone, child victims of massacres in Kosovo and traumatised soldiers in Gorazde after the Bosnian war, Lynne has treated extraordinary people in extraordinary situations. But this book is not only about the patients she has treated, it also shines a light on humanitarian aid and all its glories and problems. She shows how ill-thought-out interventions do more harm than good and also how upset, disturbance and death is always only a moment away. It reveals the work of the many people who dedicate their lives to helping those who most need it, whose belief in humanity is so strong that they will put their own lives at risk to protect it.