Leanh Nguyen, PhD -- a Vietnam War refugee who holds a doctorate in clinical psychology -- explains in 60 seconds why she started chain-smoking.
Since 2000, Dr. Nguyen has served on staff at the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture. Think about that. There is actually a whole career path for professionals who do forensic evaluations and treatment of survivors of torture from all over the world.
Dr. Nguyen devotes her clinical work to severe trauma and mental health issues faced by immigrants and refugees. She served as a clinical evaluator for Physicians for Human Rights' landmark report Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of US Torture and Its Impact.
Dr. Nguyen has seen a lot of torture victims. She is herself a former refugee of the Vietnam War. Yet she started chain-smoking after hearing first-hand accounts of U.S. torture in Abu Ghraib.
Recently, Dr. Nguyen's colleague at the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, Allen Keller, MD (a co-author of PHR's Broken Laws, Broken Lives report), stated, "The horrific consequences of U.S. detention and interrogation policy are indelibly written on the bodies and minds of the former detainees in scars, debilitating injuries, humiliating memories and haunting nightmares."
What happens when U.S. civilian and military personnel, acting with the complicity of U.S. medical personnel, strip away what people hold sacred?
That's a question that Dr. Nguyen wanted to address when I corresponded with her about doing this short video for PHR about her experiences as a medical evaluator. I asked her to speak about how she felt while speaking with men who have never been charged with any crime, but who endured months of torture by U.S. personnel. How she felt? She said she took up chain-smoking, and wanted to explain why.
It's time for someone to do something more to stop U.S. torture now.