To all members and friends of the WACP

The registration to the Rotterdam conference from 15 till 17 september, 2022, is open from today, the 19th of May, 2022. The Early Bird registration will only last till the 16th of June, 2022! Registration to the Pre Conference Workshops on the 14th of Sepember will open later. 

For more information see: www.wacp2022.org

Open Invitation

Family & Culture Special Interest Group (SIG)

SIG Co-chairs: Vincenzo Di Nicola & Riyadh Al-Baldawi

World Association of Cultural Psychiatry (WACP)

WACP President: Roberto Lewis-Fernández

 

Dear Colleague and Friend,

The Family & Culture Special Interest Group (SIG) of the World Association of Cultural Psychiatry (WACP) would like to invite you to a virtual work meeting on June 11, 2022 @1 pm EDT.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/5029540422?pwd=VEhpMHJILzFBbnJIUzJaN3dZbmowZz09

Meeting ID: 502 954 0422
Passcode: 545710

The aim of this meeting is to plan a program for our future events for the Family & Culture SIG. We are reaching out to you to help us with your expertise and clinical experiences to put those topics you want us to treat in our future programs.

Our intention as co-founders of this SIG is to convene colleagues interested in families and culture together to share their clinical experiences and inform us about  new models and forms of family intervention they are using in their clinical practices.

Doing therapy with families is complex and needs to include a number of theoretical models as well as knowledge of the family’s socio-cultural and religious background, among other key variables, requiring an understanding of the character of their problem and an understanding of how family members work to solve these problems.

International migration (both forced and voluntary forms) makes the displacement of the family from their home socio-cultural environment to a new one at the host country is often a huge social challenge. This process brings many challenges to the family’s internal and external relations and resources. To deal with all these challenges, the family usually need support and professional help from culturally-informed experts. Psychiatric problems within migrant families could be another critical social challenge where many families need specialized help to deal with these challenges.  

We would like to include in our future program wider topics on family intervention where theoretical and practical clinical experiences complement each other. We hope that your active participation at our coming work meeting will help to achieve this target. We are looking to encourage wider group of professionals working with the families in our future program and activities.

We look forward to meeting you at this upcoming planning meeting.

Please confirm your participation by email to us:

Vincenzo Di Nicola: vincenzodinicola@gmail.com

Hans Rohlof: hrohlof@gmail.com

 

 

The Local Organizing Committee of the 6th World Congress of the World Association of Cultural Psychiatry (WACP2022) presents a free webinar on Thursday, May 19th, 7 PM CET. This is the third webinar in the preparation of the World Conference of Cultural Psychiatry in Rotterdam, 14-17 September 2022. See: www.wacp2022.org

The webinar will simultaneously be translated into the Ukrainian and Polish language, to ensure that clinicians who speak those languages can follow the lectures and discussion.

Due to the war in Ukraine millions of Ukrainians flee the country, mostly women and children. Many countries are hosting war refugees. Hosting war refugees from Ukraine reminds of the hosting of war refugees from Bosnia. What can we learn from hosting war refugees? What went well and what went wrong in hosting war refugees from Bosnia? What facilities or resources are most required? How does the host society need to facilitate integration of war refugees? How many developed posttraumatic stress syndrome, or other mental health problems? Do we need to take care of prevention of psychotrauma or increase accessibility to mental health care? What are the consequences of fleeing from war for family relations? What lessons do we need to learn in order to improve hosting war refugees from Ukraine?

We asked two world famous scientists-practitioners to give a brief lecture about their earlier experience, mostly with Bosnian refugees, but also with refugees from other countries.

  1. Stevan Weine. Lessons learnt from working with Bosnian refugees

Dr. Weine is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois Chicago College of Medicine, where he also Director of Global Medicine and Director of the Center for Global Health. For 30 years he has been conducting research both with refugees and migrants in the U.S. and in post-conflict countries, focused on mental health, health, and violence prevention.  This work has been supported by multiple grants from the NIMH, NICHD, DHS, NIJ, and other state, federal, and private funders, all with collaboration from community partners. This work has resulted in more than 130 publications and two books: When History is a Nightmare: Lives and Memories of Ethnic Cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Rutgers, 1999) and Testimony and Catastrophe: Narrating the Traumas of Political Violence (Northwestern, 2006).

  1. Julia Bala. How to prevent and treat mental health problems in families and children.

Julia Bala, Ph.D is psychologist, psychotherapist and independent consultant. Educated in former Yugoslavia and the USA, since arrival to the Netherlands in 1992, she has been specializing in diagnostics and treatment of traumatized refugee children and families. As a former staff member of Centrum 45/ARQ, National Psychotrauma Center and Pharos Foundation, she developed therapeutic interventions in relation to family consequences of trauma, participated in establishment of novel treatment and preventive programs.

Her current work, as independent consultant, focuses on the development and implementation of preventive programs for refugee parents and families. She provides training, consultation, participates in research projects and publishes on topics related to her main fields of interest: the intergenerational consequences of trauma, the influence of (forced) migration on parenting and the development of children and fostering resilience through multifamily interventions. 

Date: 19th of May, 2022

Time: 19.00 till 20.30 Central European Time.

Eastern Daylight Time: 1 – 2:30 PM (New York City)
Central Daylight Time: 12 – 1:30 PM (Mexico City)

 

Schedule:

19.00-19.05: Short introduction by Dr. Hans Rohlof, officer of the WACP.

19.05-19.35 Lecture by Prof. Weine

19.35-20.05: Lecture by Dr. Bala

20.05-20.30: Q&A and discussion by the audience.  Dr. Simon Groen, anthropologist, the Netherlands, will moderate the discussion.

Free registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_XrYMeC2DS4SZXs3Gjt-E4A

This webinar is presented to you by the World Association of Cultural Psychiatry supported by ZonMW (Dutch Organization for Stimulating Health Research and Care Innovation)