140m suffer from psychiatric disorders in Arab world
associate professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences at UAEU, and one of the lead researchers.
“It is also important to enhance the educational curricula in medical schools and in residency training programmes… One essential skill is to respectfully empathise with the patients to help them recognise what happened to them and positively change the narrative to focus on areas of strength rather than dwell on what is wrong with them,” he added.
“It is estimated that as many as 100–140 million people in the Arab world suffer from one or more psychiatric disorders. Violence, war, political and social instability, and change have all played a role in increasing the regional prevalence of trauma. The physical and psychological consequences of trauma are disabling to individuals, families, and communities,” he said, highlighting the important need for doctors in the region to be able to handle the issue.
Explaining some of the main factors behind psychological trauma, Osman said they ranged from domestic violence to the effects of war. “Traumas frequently reported by their patients were attributed to recent death of a close relative or friend (62.3 per cent), domestic violence (41.4 per cent), divorce/ separation (72.1 per cent), serious traffic accident (45.6 per cent), sexual assault/rape (20.3 per cent), child abuse (20.3 per cent), psychological effects of war (30.9 per cent), victims of crime (15.9 per cent), refugees/ internally displaced persons (20.6 per cent).
“[Other causes were due to] physical effects of war (19.1 per cent), torture (13.2 per cent), elderly abuse (11.6 per cent), psychological effects of a natural disaster (7.4 per cent), physical effect of a natural disaster (7.2 per cent), and child soldiers (4.3 per cent).