Mental Health and War: A Special Focus On The Gaza Strip

Hosted by the UK-Palestine Mental Health Network

Speakers:

Dr Brian Barber, Dr Nimisha Patel and Dr Derek Summerfield

Chaired by Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP)

October 10th 2014

6.30pm - 8.30pm
Venue - To be Confirmed 

The Gaza Strip, Palestine is a war zone. In the last five years its residents have experienced three wars that have cost the lives of over 3,000 citizens, of which many were children. Recently returned from The Gaza Strip Professor Brian Barber will provide an in depth account of the scale and type of mental suffering that Gazans are enduring. Dr Barber will also speak about his decades of work in The Gaza Strip that has looked at the longitudinal effects of occupation and war on the well-being of children and adolescents. Sharing the platform with Professor Barber will be Dr Nimisha Patel and Dr Derek Summerfield. Dr Patel, a clinical psychologist, will provide important insights as a mental health professional who has worked in Gaza for large providers of mental health care such as the United Nations. Dr Summerfield, psychiatrist at the South London and Maudsley Trust, has vast experience researching trauma and war, and will provide a more nuanced view on some of the limits of the recent rise of a global mental health discourse.

Biographies of Speakers & Chair

Derek Summerfield is a consultant psychiatrist at South London and Maudsley Trust and is an honorary senior lecturer at London's Institute of Psychiatry and a member of the Executive Committee of Transcultural Special Interest Group at the Royal College of Psychiatry. He is also an Honorary Fellow of the Egyptian Psychiatric Association. In addition to his clinical work Dr Summerfield is a researcher with a focus on war and the construction of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Dr Summerfield has worked to bring more attention to the medicalisation of the treatment of trauma in war zones. 

Nimisha Patel is a Chartered Clinical Psychologist and Reader in Clinical Psychology, University of East London Director and Consultant Clinical Psychologist, International Centre for Health and Human Rights. Nimisha has practised as a chartered clinical psychologist since 1989 in the NHS, specializing in developing appropriate psychological health services for minority ethnic people, including refugees; and since 1996 she has also specialised in the field of grave human rights violations, particularly torture and gender based violence. She has worked with UNWRA for several years as a consultant, trainer and clinical supervisor, in Gaza and in Lebanon, helping to develop their community mental health services for the Palestinian people.

Brian K. Barber, PhD is a Jacobs Foundation Fellow at New America and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Youth and Political Conflict at the University of Tennessee (USA) .He specialize in the study of youth in contexts of political conflict, particularly in the Palestinian Territories, Bosnia, and Egypt. Currently, the Jacobs Foundation (Switzerland) is funding two of the Center’s projects: a 4-year study of the life histories of current Palestinian adults who were youth during the first intifada; a 2-year study of youth of the Egyptian revolution. Dr. Barber is the editor of Adolescents and War: How Youth Deal with Political Conflict (2009, Oxford University Press).

Medical Aid for Palestinians 

Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) works for the health and dignity of Palestinians living under occupation and as refugees. Working in partnership with local health providers and hospitals, MAP delivers health and medical care to those worst affected by conflict, occupation and displacement. With offices located in Beirut, Ramallah, Jerusalem and Gaza City, MAP responds rapidly in times of crisis, and works directly with communities on longer term health development.