Dr Rex Haigh goes to Kabul to help set up PD-style TCs
Dr Rex Haigh, a Berkshire based psychiatrist, is this week in Kabul, Afghanistan, working with Dr Yousuf Rahimi to help him set up training programmes based on therapeutic community principles.
Dr Yousuf Rahimi, also a Berkshire psychiatrist, has received a 1.5m Euro grant to help rebuild psychiatric services in Kabul over 18 months with the International Medical Corps (a USA-based non-governmental aid association). Rahimi is using principles from the best of British community care to establish training programmes for staff in the country. Because prolonged trauma causes long standing emotional disabilities, Dr Yousuf is including group psychotherapy methods, including therapeutic communities, similar to those in the national PD Programme.
Dr Haigh commented on the eve of his trip: “The hope is that Dr Yousuf will be able to help set up holistic ‘biopsychosocial’ treatment programmes which mobilise the natural caring resources in the Afghan communities to help heal the psychological wounds of war.”
Dr Haigh will be updating his blog while away.
[...] outside door by a polite uniformed official. And just in the other side of that door was Yousuf (Dr Yousuf Rahimi, a Berkshire psychiatrist) – with the driver and security man. Apparently, they [...]