Mental health course for public focuses on patient rehabilitation
Members of the public will have access for the first time to a course designed to help them to better support people with mental illness.
Parents who have a child with mental health problems and others with colleagues or friends in need will be among those to benefit when the programme is launched.
The psychosocial rehabilitation course was announced at the First International Congress of the World Association for Psychosocial Rehabilitation, held in Abu Dhabi yesterday.
UAE health providers will provide accredited courses in Arabic and English for residents.
At present, only Sheikh Khalifa Medical City teaches the programme and it is only for medical professionals.
At the event, doctors stressed the importance of integrating those with mental illness into society, by helping them get the skills necessary to be able to get a job, finish school and achieve the life goals they choose.
“The concept of psychosocial rehabilitation is not well matured in the minds of people, they are interested but want to be shown how to apply it,” said Dr Tarek Selim, medical director at Sheikh Khalifa Medical City.
The centre’s behavioural sciences pavilion began the process of rehabilitating and integrating patients back into society in 1995, including those with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or severe depression.
“We are treating with drugs and patients are doing better, but are we carrying out our role to the community?” he asked. “Are these patients able to function as a father, as a worker, and is he able to enjoy his life, to pursue his career, interact with other people? Just treating patients is not enough.”
Dr Medhat Elsabbahy, head of psychiatric rehabilitation at SKMC, said that more community support centres were needed.
“Establishing more community-based services and training more personnel is very important ... psychiatric rehabilitation practitioners are very limited around the world and in the region,” he said.
“Our main aim now is not just giving patients medicines to manage their symptoms but to get them better functioning – taking them back into society.”
Prof Ahmed Okasha, founder and emeritus chairman of the Institute of Psychiatry at Egypt’s Ain Shams University, said that reintegration into society remained at an early stage in the region.
“We always say that the patient has improved but we speak about the symptoms only, we never speak about the quality of life,” he said.
“If he is a young boy or girl, we don’t speak about academic progress, because it stopped owing to the illness. Or if they are married, we don’t speak about their marriage, their job, their personal communication – this is rehabilitation.
“We have to look at how to integrate the person into society. Drugs will never help them fully integrate; they will improve symptoms but not quality life. We should train all psychiatrists not only to give drugs but to advise on rehabilitation.”