Mental Health Course Initiated By Saima Hossain To Be Taught At AUW

The five-week course focuses on the historical treatment of mental illness; mental health in local and global cultural contexts; positive psychology; the effect of violence on mental health; and the integration of maternal and child health with mental health care delivery. It is being taught by a series of distinguished visiting faculty from Harvard Medical School, Yale School of Medicine, National University of Singapore and London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, as well as one of AUW's own resident faculty members.

Thirty students from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam have enrolled, noting their interest in psychology and eagerness to study an unfamiliar topic.

The course was originally proposed and initiated by Ms. Saima Wazed Hossain, member of the World Health Organization’s Expert Advisory Panel on Mental Health. It was designed by a steering committee chaired by Professor Arthur Kleinman – the Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University; and Professor of Medical Anthropology in Global Health and Social Medicine and Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School. It has been supported with grants from the Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard South Asia Institute, and the Ladd Family Foundation.

This week, Dr. Anne Becker of Harvard Medical School concluded her section of the course with a focus on autism and dementia, highlighting the importance of the life course approach. Dr. Becker is Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Her field research has taken her to Fiji, where she has worked on the effect of media on disordered eating in teenage girls; and Haiti, where she was the co-principal investigator on a novel study on integrating mental health care into schools.

When asked why she feels a course on Global Mental Health for women at AUW is important, Dr. Becker shared, “Mental disorders impose an enormous health, economic, and social burden globally and yet there are persistent gaps between available resources – economic, knowledge, and service-related – and needs. Although there are effective treatments for mental illness, often treatment delivery and community outreach remain challenging. Thus, there will be great future benefit from the ideas, innovation, and advocacy of young women toward meeting these challenges both in their respective regions and globally.”