Table 3 Zimbabwean studies of the prevalence of CMD and Trauma Source: Reeler.2009 Study Community mental health: Williams & Hall [1987]xix Reeler, Williams & Todd [1991]xx Community survey [2006. unpublished]xxi Trauma samples: Amani Trust [1996]xxii Amani Trust [1997]xxiii Reeler et al [1998]xxiv Human Rights Forum [1998]xxv Amani Trust [2002]xxvi Action Aid International [2005]xxvii Idasa [2006]xxviii ZTVP [2007]xxix SACST [2008]xxx WOZA women [2007]xxxi Sample Instrument % prevalence District Hospitals Primary care clinics SRQ-20 SRQ-20 11%-37% 24%-28% Primary care clinics SSQ 39% War veterans Community survivors Primary care clinics Food riots victims SRQ-20 SRQ-20 SRQ-20 SRQ-8 73% 13% 51% 36% Commercial farm workers Victims of Operation Murambatsvina SRQ-8 SRQ-8 81% 69% Zimbabwe refugees in South Africa [street survey] Women refugees in South Africa [clinic attendees] Zimbabwe refugees in South Africa [multiple sites] WOZA members SRQ-8 47% SRQ-8 71% SRQ-8 49.5% HTQ 53% Finally, the unpublished study on the prevalence of Common Mental Disorders [CMD] in Harare demonstrated that the risks for developing a CMD increased significantly with the number of occasions a person experienced violence, with the startling finding that the risk increased 14 times with having one‘s property confiscated. This last would seem to reflect one of the consequences of Operation Murambatsvina. There is a methodological point here. Whilst the Self-Reporting Questionnaires (SRQ-20m and SRQ-8) and the Shona Symptom Questionnaire (SSQ) have been widely used in Zimbabwe in trauma studies these are instruments developed for screening for psychological disorder, and are not instruments developed specifically for the study of trauma disorders, or for complex grief reactions. There is a clear need for a new generation of locally validated instruments capable of both detecting disorders due to trauma, as well as providing information about functionality, resilience, and protective factors. But, problems of method aside, it seems evident that there are significant numbers of Zimbabweans affected by the violence and Potentially Traumatic Events [PTEs] that have afflicted Zimbabwe over the past century, and this requires that we pay more attention to the effects of the complex emergencies than we have done to date. When considering responses to these statistics, it is also important to remember, as indicated earlier, that they are as much a measure of increasing social and political disorder as they are of individual pathology; arguably the increasing levels of distress recorded by Action Aid, for example, are a very normal reaction to a worsening context. Furthermore, in addition to the urgent need for rigorous methodological, quantitative studies of psychological suffering as a consequence both of organized violence and HIV related mass death, there is an equal need for those forms of treatment and/or healing most favoured within a range of different sections of Zimbabwe‘s multicultural society. This raises a second, crucial methodological point: namely the need for rigorous qualitative studies that, through close attention to language and narration, can clarify the individual , social and cultural constructs through which victims ascribe specific meanings to their experiences of organized violence and torture, as well as their experiences of the symptoms they suffer as a consequence.xxxii There has been regrettably little research work in such modes in Zimbabwe.xxxiii