Features
Where have our ethics gone?
“A man without ethics is a wild beast let loose upon this world.”– Albert Camus –
(Address to the Ceylon College of Physicians, 19 September, 2024, Colombo, Sri Lanka)
You might wonder why a scholar would opt to ask a question as seemingly banal and commonsensical as ‘where have our ethics gone’ when you, as the Ceylon College of Physicians, and others, are here to deliberate on your own intellectual, research and policy quests focused on the theme, ‘Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity.’ When I was asked to speak at this event, I was, at the same time, impacted by a serious personal crisis.
It was obvious to me that it would be impossible to deal with my crisis without considering the implication of ethics and its absence in the broader sense. After all, my former university was censuring me for standing up for something I considered was a fundamental body of ethics: freedom of thought and expression on the one hand, and academic freedom on the other. The compromise of these ethics took place in a situation my former superiors and colleagues thought they should be seen as the guardians of what they thought were the interests of the state – in this instance, India. Hence, setting out from how ethics were both impacted and compromised in this situation, and reflecting further, it became abundantly clear that without serious consideration of ethics, you, as a group of professionals, would also not be able to work in your profession, and all of us would also not be able to collectively imagine our futures as a civilization.
The world we are used to and our taken-for-granted comfort zones in it would be in crisis if we moved too far away from our commitment to what we used to call ethics. And to reiterate, I was reflecting upon this in both personal and public contexts where ethics, as I thought I understood them, had become very distant from work and life. It is in explaining this general situation that John Berger has noted, “without ethics, man has no future. This is to say, mankind without them [ethics] cannot be itself.
Ethics determine choices and actions and suggest difficult priorities.” I have referred to ethics as ‘what we used to call ethics.’ This is a very conscious choice of words on my part. And this is because ethics in the way we used to understand them in the not-so-distant past that are still remembered by my generation and practiced by my parents until they passed on, is not how ethics are understood or practiced today. Often, it seems to me ethics is looked down upon as a reflection of foolishness and naivety, and, therefore, very casually violated, too, often without consequences. And I am not talking of our country alone, but also our region and the world. To put it more bluntly, ethics are often seen as a liability and, therefore, something that can be done away with. This, in a sense, is my point of departure for what I have to say today.
Given this situation of liminality, what would ethics constitute in its most basic sense? Within a commonsensical understanding, I suggest ethics incorporates two interrelated elements.
First, ethics would mean an adherence to well-established standards of what is right and wrong. At this fundamental level, ethics would outline what people, as human beings, should do and what they should refrain from. At this level, ethics are generally understood in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, and notions of fairness. Ethics, for example, refer to those standards that impose reasonable obligations to refrain from actions that are clearly wrong, which includes, but are not limited to, rape, stealing, murder, assault, slander, and fraud.
But looking at Sri Lanka’s Parliament alone and the extended landscape of our local politics, individuals who commit all or many of these crimes are voted into positions of power by the people themselves. The situation is more or less very similar in South Asia. Against this backdrop, it almost seems as if these ethically wrong acts have become virtues.
So, where indeed have our ethics gone?
Second, as pointed out in the 1987 essay, ‘What is Ethics’ by Velasquez, Andre, Shanks, and Meyer, “ethics incorporate(s) the study and development of one’s ethical standards.” As they further note, personal “feelings, laws, and social norms can deviate from what is ethical.” Given this possibility, they remind us, “it is necessary to constantly examine one’s standards to ensure that they are reasonable and well-founded.” Ethics, in this sense then also refer to “the continuous effort of studying our own moral beliefs and our moral conduct, and striving to ensure that we, and the institutions we help to shape, live up to standards that are reasonable and solidly based.” In effect, ethics have a component of reflection through formal close examination in societies where ethics are taken seriously. But in our context, either in schools, in universities or in other spaces of citizenship training, do we engage in this kind of reflection?
So, where have our ethics gone?
This is a question I constantly asked myself and continue to ask when my own personal crisis began to unfold in my former university. The “deafening silence” of my colleagues in the midst of an unreasonable and targeted attack on me for merely standing up to a PhD student’s right to free expression and academic freedom meant that South Asian University, for which, incidentally, your tax rupees must also have been channelled as a SAARC initiative, “will never again stand for academic freedom.” As I noted in public at the time in an interview with Vidheesha Kuntamalla “the fallout of this silence and the institutionalized and choreographed timidity is that no critical and self-reflective research will ever be undertaken at the South Asian University” again. This is one small example of the long-term consequences in a single institution when ethics are deliberately placed on the back burner in the interest of mere personal convenience and gain.
I want to flag three misconceptions we often have about what constitutes ethics:
One,people often equate ethics with religion. The main religious traditions in our country certainly stress high ethical standards in the conduct of their adherents. But this generalization makes sense if we only focus on the doctrinal and textual positions of these religions. However, even this cannot be sustained if we consider examples from the public and private utterances and lives of many people who claim to be religious, and particularly religious leaders. The reduction of ethics into religion is also very dangerous because then it could also mean that only religious people would carry the burden of ethics. But we know ethics should matter in the conduct of life of both the pious and the non-believers. For sure, religion can set “high ethical standards and can provide intense motivations for ethical behaviour” (Velasquez, Andre, Shanks, and Meyer 1987).
But we know from our own experience in this country, and by looking at our immediate regional neighbourhood, the first casualty in the practice of local and national politics, are usually ethics. And this compromise is often made in the name of religion. So, reducing ethics to religion, and that, too, without proper reflection is always a grave mistake.
Two, people also often believe being ethical means following the law. Without doubt, the law is expected to incorporate ethical standards drawn from bodies of legal codes, history and civilizational memory. But laws are not always the same as ethics. Let me explain. Championed by unprincipled autocrats and adopted in dubious political climates, laws could very drastically deviate from what are ideal ethical standards for a society.
The recent attempts in Sri Lanka to stifle freedom of expression under the provisions of the ICCPR Act (which is based on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights), and the much longer-term experience of using the Prevention of Terrorism Act for similar purposes, are classic examples. The manner in which blasphemy laws in Pakistan have been drafted and applied historically is another example. Similarly, ‘National Security’ Laws, ‘Anti-Terrorism’ Laws and elements of the Public Safety Act have been used in India to repress dissent and to suspend fundamental rights, particularly of minorities in specific situations.
So, in these situations, when laws themselves are proven to be unethical in their application, the ethical position would be the commitment to change these laws and not to become subsumed by their erroneous logic.
Three, many of us also believe that being ethical means adhering to what society considers acceptable. It is generally correct that most of us would accept societal standards and norms that are ethical. Our respect towards elders is one such position. But standards of behaviour in any society can deviate from what is ideally ethical to not only to what is simply unethical, but also clearly tyrannical. It is not an exaggeration to say that “an entire society can become ethically corrupt” under specific historical conditions (Velasquez, Andre, Shanks, and Meyer 1987). To use a personal example, whatever society’s ideals are, caste, religious and ethnic discrimination is strictly not possible for me. I have never engaged in such discrimination, and I never will. It is about adhering to an ethical principle, irrespective of society’s dominant trends. The way in which draconian social and political orders have been planned, implemented and broadly accepted by some societies is a classic example of an entire society becoming ethically compromised. Nazi Germany and South Africa, under apartheid, are two recent examples.
So, what does all this mean?
What concerns me, as a person, as a citizen, as an inhabitant of the planet, and I think the least important in this context, as a scholar, is that ‘ethics’, as an idea and as a set of good practices, as understood above, have lapsed from the commonsense in our country; in our extended geopolitical neighbourhood; and, in varying degrees, in the world we live in. For those of my generation, the value of ethics came from our parents which they had learnt as part of their colonial education and as part of their citizenship training to be good colonial subjects. Whatever other failures that education might have had due to the very imprint of coloniality and its necessary brutality, it did give a very strong sense of ethics within the colonial framework.
But even after independence, aspects of that education and the ethics that came with it, held sway as a central preoccupation of many people in my parents’ generation. For people like my father who was a government surveyor, my mother who was a school teacher and my father-in-law who was a civil servant – just to take three personal examples – doing anything wrong, and therefore unethical, was simply unthinkable. But their principled positions, at times, did have negative personal consequences. While there were examples to the contrary, even at that time, there was a strong sense of what they called the ‘right thing.’ This was their reference to ethics. But today, that quotidian emphasis is not something that is easily seen. Our present-day education system does not seem to place too much conscious emphasis on ethics. I am also not sure if this is even done within the family as it used to be. It seems to me, in this time and age, being ethical is understood as depriving oneself of economic, social and political opportunities.
This rupture of ethics, its distancing from day-to-day life, is most clearly manifest in our politics at all levels. It is not that an old set of ethics has been deliberately replaced by a new one. It is more like ethics have been overdetermined by what I would call ‘non-ethics.’ That is, a discourse on power, money, avarice and influence has made adherence to ethics and reflection on ethics immaterial, relegating them to a position of insignificance and relative erasure.
You may think that I am being unreasonably dreamy, and too idealistic, and our world still knows about ethics, and that I simply do not see it. I have actually been told this before. But to me, the problem is not that we do not know about ethics today, but that we do not allow ethics to blossom as an integral part of our lives, and rule our lives, work and conscience. The problem with ethics anywhere historically is that they tend to be very fragile and are usually among the first casualties in any condition of catastrophe or challenge.
In my monologue today, I have not tried to provide you with ideal answers. To provide answers to such complex questions is not the role of a sociologist. That is the job of self-proclaimed religious gurus with divine connections, know-it-all politicians we may or may not believe in and certainly street corner magicians. My job and that of others like me is to simply situate problems in context and explore what is possible and what is at stake. That, I think I have done.
As you begin your deliberations within the theme, ‘Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity,’ you may also want to consider why you came up with this theme in the first place in this time and age when these three principles should already be well ingrained in the way we think and work. But if you were concerned enough to bring this up as a theme, perhaps we share the same anxieties about ethics in our society and work environments, and what our collective futures may look like.
The final question you may wish to ask yourselves is, where would our youth learn and be inspired by ethics that can rebuild a decent world for them. It certainly cannot come from the life lessons imparted by political leaders and publicly vocal religious leaders of our time. There is a vast difference between what is preached by them and what is actually done. For me, this dichotomy is a cartography of the collective failure in our times. This is what Bertrand Russell meant when he noted, “we have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one which we preach but do not practice, and another which we practice, but seldom preach.”
My request and suggestion is that we can no longer bank on politics or religion to re-invent our disappearing sense of ethics for the future. We also cannot hope for divine intervention or anticipate that someone else in the form of a local superman or superwoman, or in Sri Lanka’s case a super reptile rising from the depths of a sanctified river will resolve our problems.
It can only come from individuals, like us, whose only vested interest should be our own stake in an ethically sound collective future, and to bring that urgency to our families, workplaces and the wider public sphere.
Thank you.
Exchanging greetings and resolving to do something positive in the coming year certainly create an uplifting atmosphere. Unfortunately, their effects wear off within the first couple of weeks, and most of the resolutions are forgotten for good. However, this time around, we must be different, because the nation is coming out of the most devastating natural disaster ever faced, the results of which will impact everyone for many years to come. Let us wish that we as a nation will have the courage and wisdom to resolve to do the right things that will make a difference in our lives now and prepare for the future. The truth is that future is going to be challenging for tropical islands like ours.
We must not have any doubts about global warming phenomenon and its impact on local weather patterns. Over its 4.5-billion-year history, the earth has experienced drastic climate changes, but it has settled into a somewhat moderate condition characterised by periods of glaciation and retreat over the last million years. Note that anatomically modern Homo sapiens have been around only for two to three hundred thousand years, and it is reasoned that this stable climate may have helped their civilisation. There have been five glaciation periods over the last five hundred thousand years, and these roughly hundred-thousand-year cycles are explained by the astronomical phenomenon known as the Milankovitch Cycle (the lows marked with stars in Figure 1). At present, the earth is in an inter glacial period and the next glaciation period will be in about eighty thousand years.
(See Figure 1. Glaciation Cycles)
During these cycles, the global mean temperature has changed by about 7-8 degrees Centigrade. In contrast to this natural variation, earth has been experiencing a rapid temperature increase over the past hundred years. There is ample scientific evidence from multiple sources that this is caused by the increase in carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere, which has seen a 50% increase over the historical levels in just hundred years (Figure 2). Carbon dioxide is one of the greenhouse gases which traps heat from the sun and slows the natural cooling process of the earth. This increase of carbon dioxide is due to human activities: fossil fuel burning, industrial processes, deforestation, and agricultural practices. Ironically, those who suffer from the consequences did not contribute to these changes; those who did contribute are trying their best to convince the world that the temperature changes we see are natural, and nothing should be done. We must have no illusions that global warming is a human-caused phenomenon, and it has serious repercussions.
(See Figure 2. Global Temperature and Carbon Dioxide Levels)
Why should we care about global warming? Well, there are many reasons, but let us focus on earth’s water cycle. Middle schoolers know that water evaporates from the oceans, rises into the atmosphere where it cools, condenses, and falls back onto earth as rain or snow. When the oceans warm, the evaporation increases, and the warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapour. Water laden atmosphere results in severe and erratic weather. Ironically, water vapour is also a greenhouse gas, and this has a snowballing effect. The increased ocean temperature also disrupts ocean currents that influence the weather on land. The combined result is extreme and severe weather: violent storms and droughts depending on the geographic location. What is happening on the West coast of the USA is an example. The net result will be major departures from what is considered normal weather over millennia.
International organisations have been talking for 30 years about limiting global temperature increase to 1.5oC above pre-industrial levels by curtailing greenhouse gas emissions. But not much has been done and the temperature has risen by 1.2oC already. The challenge is that even if we can stop greenhouse gas emissions completely, right now, we have the problem of removing already existing 2,500 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere, for which there are no practical solutions yet. Scientists worry about the consequences of runaway temperature increase and its effect on human life, which are many. It is not a doomsday prediction of life disappearing from earth, but a warning that life will be quite different from what humans are used to. All small tropical nations like ours are burdened with mitigating the consequences; in other words, get ready for more Ditwahs, do not wait for the twelve-day forecast.
Some opined that not enough warning was given regarding Ditwah; the truth is that the tools available for long-term prediction of the path or severity of a weather event (cyclone, typhoon, hurricane, tornado) are not perfect. There are multitude of rapidly changing factors contributing to the behavior of weather events. Meteorologists feed most up to date data to different computer models and try to identify the prediction with the highest probability. The multiple predictions for the same weather event are represented by what is known as spaghetti plots. Figure 3 shows the forecasted paths of a 2019 Atlantic hurricane five days ahead on the right and the actual path it followed on the left. While the long-term prediction of the path of a cyclone remains less accurate, its strength can vary within hours. There are several Indian ocean cyclones tracking sites online accessible to the public.
Figure 3. Forecasting vs Reality
There is no argument that short-term forecasts of this nature are valuable in saving lives and movable assets, but having long term plans in place to mitigate the effects of natural disasters is much more important than that. If a sizable section of the population must start over their lives from ground zero after every storm, how can a country economically develop?
The degree of our unpreparedness came to light during Ditwah disaster. It is not for lack of awareness; judging by the deluge of newspaper articles, blogs, vlogs, and speeches made, there is no shortage of knowledge and technical expertise to meet the challenge. The government has assured the necessary resources, and there is good reason to trust that the funds will be spent properly and not to line the pockets as happened during previous disasters. However, history tells us that despite the right conditions and good intentions, we could miss the opportunity again. Reasons for such skepticisms emerged during the few meetings the President held with the bureaucrats while visiting effected areas. Also, the COPE committee meetings plainly display the inherent inefficiencies and irregularities of our system and the absence of work ethics among all levels of the bureaucracy.
What it tells us is that we as a nation have an attitude problem. There are ample scholarly analyses by local as well as international researchers on this aspect of Sri Lankan psyche, and they label it as either island or colonial mentality. The first refers to the notion of isolated communities perceiving themselves as exceptional or superior to the rest of the world, and that the world is hell-bent on destroying or acquiring what they have. This attitude is exacerbated by the colonial mentality that promoted the divide and conquer rules and applied it to every societal characteristic imaginable; and plundered natural resources. As a result, now we are divided along ethnic, linguistic, religious, political, class, caste, geography, wealth, and many more real and imagined lines. Sadly, politicians, some religious leaders, and other opportunists keep inflaming these sentiments for their benefit when most of the population is willing to move on.
The first wish, therefore, is to get the strength, courage, and wisdom to think rationally, and discard outdated and outmoded belief systems that hinder our progress as a nation. May we get the courage to stop venerating elite who got there by exploiting the masses and the country’s wealth. More importantly, may we get the wisdom to educate the next generation to be free thinkers, give them the power and freedom to reject fabrications, myths, and beliefs that are not based on objective facts.
This necessitates altering our attitude towards many aspects of life. There is no doubt that free thinking does not come easily, it involves the proverbial ‘exterminating the consecrated bull.’ We are rightfully proud about our resplendent past. It is true that hydraulic engineering, art, and architecture flourished during the Anuradhapura period.
However, for one reason or another, we have lost those skills. Nowadays, all irrigation projects are done with foreign aid and assistance. The numerous replicas of the Avukana statue made with the help of modern technology, for example, cannot hold a candle to the real one. The fabled flying machine of Ravana is a figment of marvelous imagination of a skilled poet. Reality is that today we are a nation struggling with both natural and human-caused disasters, and dependent on the generosity of other nations, especially our gracious neighbor. Past glory is of little help in solving today’s problems.
Next comes national unity. Our society is so fragmented that no matter how beneficial a policy or an idea for the nation could be, some factions will oppose it, not based on facts, but by giving into propaganda created for selfish purposes. The island mentality is so pervasive, we fail to trust and respect fellow citizens, not to mention the government. The result is absence of long-term planning and stability. May we get the insight to separate policy from politics; to put nation first instead of our own little clan, or personal gains.
With increasing population and decreasing livable and arable land area, a national land management system becomes crucial. We must have an intelligent zoning system to prevent uncontrolled development. Should we allow building along waterways, on wetlands, and road easements? Should we not put the burden of risk on the risk takers using an insurance system instead of perpetual public aid programs? We have lost over 95% of the forest cover we had before European occupation. Forests function as water reservoirs that release rainwater gradually while reducing soil erosion and stabilizing land, unlike monocultures covering the hill country, the catchments of many rivers. Should we continue to allow uncontrolled encroachment of forests for tourism, religious, or industrial purposes, not to mention personal enjoyment of the elite? Is our use of land for agricultural purposes in keeping with changing global markets and local labor demands? Is haphazard subsistence farming viable? What would be the impact of sea level rising on waterways in low lying areas?
These are only a few aspects that future generations will have to grapple with in mitigating the consequences of worsening climate conditions. We cannot ignore the fact that weather patterns will be erratic and severe, and that will be the new normal. Survival under such conditions involves rational thinking, objective fact based planning, and systematic execution with long term nation interests in mind. That cannot be achieved with hanging onto outdated and outmoded beliefs, rituals, and traditions. Weather changes are not caused by divine interventions or planetary alignments as claimed by astrologers. Let us resolve to lay the foundation for bringing up the next generation that is capable of rational thinking and be different from their predecessors, in a better way.
by Geewananda Gunawardana
For centuries, Sri Lanka’s biological knowledge travelled the world — anonymously. Embedded deep within the pages of European natural history books, Sinhala words were copied, distorted and repurposed, eventually fossilising into Latinised scientific names of snakes, bats and crops found thousands of kilometres away.
Africa’s reptiles, Europe’s taxonomic catalogues and global field guides still carry those echoes, largely unnoticed and uncredited.
Now, a Sri Lankan herpetologist is tracing those forgotten linguistic footprints back to their source.
Through painstaking archival research into 17th- and 18th-century zoological texts, herpetologist and taxonomic researcher Sanjaya Bandara has uncovered compelling evidence that several globally recognised scientific names — long assumed to be derived from Greek or Latin — are in fact rooted in Sinhala vernacular terms used by villagers, farmers and hunters in pre-colonial Sri Lanka.
“Scientific names are not just labels. They are stories,” Bandara told The Island. “And in many cases, those stories begin right here in Sri Lanka.”
Sanjaya Bandara
At the heart of Bandara’s work is etymology — the study of word origins — a field that plays a crucial role in zoology and taxonomy.
While classical languages dominate scientific nomenclature, his findings reveal that Sinhala words were quietly embedded in the foundations of modern biological classification as early as the 1700s.
One of the most striking examples is Ahaetulla, the genus name for Asian vine snakes. “The word Ahaetulla is not Greek or Latin at all,” Bandara explained. “It comes directly from the Sinhala vernacular used by locals for the Green Vine Snake.” Remarkably, the term was adopted by Carl Linnaeus himself, the father of modern taxonomy.
Another example lies in the vespertilionid bat genus Kerivoula, described by British zoologist John Edward Gray. Bandara notes that the name is a combination of the Sinhala words kiri (milky) and voula (bat). Even the scientific name of finger millet, Eleusine coracana, carries linguistic traces of the Sinhala word kurakkan, a cereal cultivated in Sri Lanka for centuries.
Yet Bandara’s most intriguing discoveries extend far beyond the island — all the way to Africa and the Mediterranean.
In a research paper recently published in the journal Bionomina, Bandara presented evidence that two well-known snake genera, Duberria and Malpolon, both described in 1826 by Austrian zoologist Leopold Fitzinger, likely originated from Sinhala words.
The name Duberria first appeared in Robert Knox’s 1681 account of Ceylon, where Knox refers to harmless water snakes called “Duberria” by locals. According to Bandara, this was a mispronunciation of Diyabariya, the Sinhala term for water snakes.
“Mispronunciations are common in Knox’s writings,” Bandara said. “English authors of the time struggled with Sinhala phonetics, and distorted versions of local names entered European literature.”
Over time, these distortions became formalised. Today, Duberria refers to African slug-eating snakes — a genus geographically distant, yet linguistically tethered to Sri Lanka.
Bandara’s study also proposes the long-overdue designation of a type species for the genus, reviving a 222-year-old scientific name in the process.
Equally compelling is the case of Malpolon, the genus of Montpellier snakes found across North Africa, the Middle East and southern Europe. Bandara traced the word back to a 1693 work by English zoologist John Ray, which catalogued snakes from Dutch India — including Sri Lanka.
“The term Malpolon appears alongside Sinhala vernacular names,” Bandara noted. “It is highly likely derived from Mal Polonga, meaning ‘flowery viper’.” Even today, some Sri Lankan communities use Mal Polonga to describe patterned snakes such as the Russell’s Wolf Snake.
Bandara’s research further reveals Sinhala roots in the African Red-lipped Herald Snake (Crotaphopeltis hotamboeia), whose species name likely stems from Hothambaya, a regional Sinhala term for mongooses and palm civets.
“These findings collectively show that Sri Lanka was not just a source of specimens, but a source of knowledge,” Bandara said. “Early European naturalists relied heavily on local names, local guides and local ecological understanding.”
Perhaps the most frequently asked question Bandara encounters concerns the mighty Anaconda. While not a scientific name, the word itself is widely believed to be a corruption of the Sinhala Henakandaya, another snake name recorded in Ray’s listings of Sri Lankan reptiles.
“What is remarkable,” Bandara reflected, “is that these words travelled across continents, entered global usage, and remained there — often stripped of their original meanings.”
For Bandara, restoring those meanings is about more than taxonomy. It is about reclaiming Sri Lanka’s rightful place in the history of science.
“With this study, three more Sinhala words formally join scientific nomenclature,” he said.
“Who would have imagined that a Sinhala word would be used to name a snake in Africa?”
Long before biodiversity hotspots became buzzwords and conservation turned global, Sri Lanka’s language was already speaking through science — quietly, persistently, and across continents.
By Ifham Nizam
However, the children and their needs may be forgotten after a disaster.
Do not forget that children will also experience fear and distress although they may not have the capacity to express their emotions verbally. It is essential to create child-friendly spaces that allow them to cope through play, draw, and engage in supportive activities that help them process their experiences in a healthy manner.
The Institute for Research & Development in Health & Social Care (IRD), Sri Lanka launched the campaign, titled “Children first,” after the 2004 Tsunami, based on the fundamental principle of not to medicalise the distress but help to normalise it.
The Island picture page
The IRD distributed drawing material and play material to children in makeshift shelters. Some children grabbed drawing material, but some took away play material. Those who choose drawing material, drew in different camps, remarkably similar pictures; “how the tidal wave came”.
“The Island” supported the campaign generously, realising the potential impact of it.
The campaign became a popular and effective public health intervention.
“A public health intervention (PHI) is any action, policy, or programme designed to improve health outcomes at the population level. These interventions focus on preventing disease, promoting health, and protecting communities from health threats. Unlike individual healthcare interventions (treating individuals), which target personal health issues, public health interventions address collective health challenges and aim to create healthier environments for all.”
The campaign attracted highest attention of state and politicians.
The IRD continued this intervention throughout the protracted war, and during COVID-19.
The IRD quick to relaunch the “children first” campaign which once again have received proper attention by the public.
While promoting a public health approach to handling the situation, we would also like to note that there will be a significant smaller percentage of children and adolescents will develop mental health disorders or a psychiatric diagnosis.
We would like to share the scientific evidence for that, revealed through; the islandwide school survey carried out by the IRD in 2007.
During the survey, it was found that the prevalence of emotional disorder was 2.7%, conduct disorder 5.8%, hyperactivity disorder was 0.6%, and 8.5% were identified as having other psychiatric disorders. Absenteeism was present in 26.8%. Overall, previous exposure to was significantly associated with absenteeism whereas exposure to conflict was not, although some specific conflict-related exposures were significant risk factors. Mental disorder was strongly associated with absenteeism but did not account for its association with tsunami or conflict exposure.
The authors concluded that exposure to traumatic events may have a detrimental effect on subsequent school attendance. This may give rise to perpetuating socioeconomic inequality and needs further research to inform policy and intervention.
Even though, this small but significant percentage of children with psychiatric disorders will need specialist interventions, psychological treatment more than medication. Some of these children may complain of abdominal pain and headaches or other physical symptoms for which doctors will not be able to find a diagnosable medical cause. They are called “medically unexplained symptoms” or “somatization” or “bodily distress disorder”.
Sri Lanka has only a handful of specialists in child and adolescent psychiatric disorders but have adult psychiatrists who have enough experience in supervising care for such needy children. Compared to tsunami, the numbers have gone higher from around 20 to over 100 psychiatrists.
Most importantly, children absent from schools will need more close attention by the education authorities.
In conclusion, going by the principles of research dissemination sciences, it is extremely important that the public, including teachers and others providing social care, should be aware that the impact of Cyclone Ditwah, which was followed by major floods and landslides, which is a complex emergency impact, will range from normal human emotional behavioural responses to psychiatric illnesses. We should be careful not to medicalise this normal distress.
It’s crucial to recall an important statement made by the World Health Organisation following the Tsunam
Prof. Sumapthipala MBBS, DFM, MD Family Medicine, FSLCFP (SL), FRCPsych, CCST (UK), PhD (Lon)]
Director, Institute for Research and Development in Health and Social Care, Sri Lanka
Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences, Keele University, UK
Emeritus Professor of Global Mental Health, Kings College London
Secretary General, International society for Twin Studies
Visiting Professor in Psychiatry and Biomedical Research at the Faculty of Medicine, Kotelawala Defence University, Sri Lanka
Associate Editor, British Journal Psychiatry
Co-editor Ceylon Medical Journal.
Prof. Athula Sumathipala
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