ANNOUNCEMENT:
INTERNATIONAL MENTAL HEALTH INTEREST GROUP
2006/2007 MEETING SCHEDULE
The "International Mental Health Interest Group" (IMIG) has taken shape in
the San Francisco bay area over the several years. Our membership now
includes nearly 300 faculty, residents and students from UCSF, Stanford,
UCB and SFSU. The group was started in Spring 2004 under the auspices
of the bay area International Health Interest Group. The latter is a large
group of Stanford, Berkeley and UCSF affiliates with international health
interests, which holds regular meetings as well as an annual conference with
approximately 300-500 attendees.
The SF bay area is fortunate to have a large number of researchers, students
and clinicians working in international mental health from the perspective of
many different fields (e.g., public health, human rights, sociology, medical
anthropology, psychology, psychiatry). Bringing this group together works
synergistically with respect to learning, and research/clinical opportunities.
The goal of the International Mental Interest Group (IMIG) is to provide a
forum for faculty, residents, students and researchers with an interest in
international mental health to exchange knowledge and facilitate
research/clinical contacts and opportunities. Emphasis is placed on
maintaining a diverse array of backgrounds within the group, including, but
not limited to: public health, medical anthropology, human rights,
sociology, health policy, law, psychology, psychiatry, medical/pre-med
students. IMIG meets every other month during the academic year for a
global mental health lecture/discussion with an expert in the field, over light
dinner/appetizers. Please find the schedule of speakers for 2006/2007
below.
If you are interested in receiving updates regarding the group and its
meetings, please email: smeffert@gmail.com. There is no fee for email
updates or attending lectures; the group is funded by the UCSF Minority
Fellowship.
IMIG MEETINGS FOR THE ACADEMIC YEAR 2006/2007:
September 13th, 2006 7pm; UCSF Parnassus Campus, Langley Porter, Room 371
Dr. Jess Ghannam, PhD (Psychology)
UCSF Department of Psychiatry
Talk Title: "Psychiatric Effects of War and Occupation: Trauma or Resilience”
Dr. Jess Ghannam is Clinical Professor of
Psychiatry and faculty in the Global Health Sciences Program at the
University of California, San Francisco. He has been working in
Palestine for over 15 years teaching, conducting research on
post-traumatic stress disorder, and developing community mental health
centers throughout Gaza and the West Bank. Dr. Ghannam writes and
presents frequently on the Middle East.
November 1st, 2006 7pm; UCSF Parnassus Campus, Langley Porter, Room 371
Dr. Robert Okin, MD
UCSF Department of Psychiatry
Chief of Psychiatry, San Francisco General Hospital
Vice Chair, Department of Psychiatry, UCSF
Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, UCSF
Bio: Since joining the Department in September, 1990, Dr. Okin has undertaken a major
expansion of the SFGH community mental health and substance abuse programs and has
doubled the size of the Psychiatry Service. Intensive case management has flourished
under his leadership. Dr. Okin is a nationally and internationally known expert on human
rights for the mentally disabled. He is a member of the Board of Advisors of Mental
Disabilities Rights International (MDRI) and has led non-government organization
missions to the Ukraine, Hungary, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Mexico, Peru, Paraguay,
Turkey, and Romania to investigate human rights violations in the mental health
institutions in these countries. Dr. Okin previously served as Chair of the UCSF Clinical
Practice Group at SFGH and Interim Chair of the Community Health Network's Medical
Practice Group. He is the former Commissioner of Mental Health for the states of
Vermont and Massachusetts.
Winter/Spring 2007, Date and Location TBA
Dr. Stevan Weine, MD
International Center on Responses to Catastrophes
University of Illinois at Chicago
Stevan Weine, a psychiatrist, is a researcher, writer, teacher and clinician in the
Department of Psychiatry and the Health Research and Policy Centers of the University
of Illinois at Chicago. He is co-founder and co-director of the Project on Genocide,
Psychiatry and Witnessing, which provides family-focused community based mental
health services to Bosnians, conducts interdisciplinary research on survivors, and engages
in mental health reform in post-war countries. His scholarly work focuses on familial,
cultural and historical dimensions of traumatization. He is principal investigator of a
National Institute of Mental Health funded research study called "A Prevention and
Access Intervention for Survivor Families" that is investigating the Coffee and Family
Education and Support intervention with Bosnian and Kosovar families in Chicago. In
2001, he was awarded a Career Scientist Award from the National Institute of Mental
Health on "Services Based Research with Refugee Families" for which he is conducting
an ethnography of Bosnian adolescents and their families. Weine is author of a book of
based upon survivor's oral histories called When History is a Nightmare: Lives and
Memories of Ethnic Cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Rutgers, 1999). He is currently
writing, "Living Histories", a narrative inquiry of diverse testimony readings from within
four different 20th century socio-historical occurrences of political violence. Weine is
also Chair of the Task Force on International Trauma Training of the International
Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and principal co-author of the "Guidelines for
International Trauma Training of Practitioners in Clinical and Community Settings". He
is co-founder of the Kosovar Family Professional Education Collaborative and Services
and Scientific Director the Services Based Training for Kosovar Community Mental
Health and Prevention which is building family-focused community based public mental
health services in Kosova.
March 14th, 2007 7pm; Location TBA
Dr. Jeffery Mandel PhD, MPH
UCSF School of Medicine, Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS)
Co-Director of the CAPS International Program
Dr. Mandel has been Co-Director of the CAPS International Program for the past seven
years. He is a Specialist in the Department of Internal Medicine and is a social-clinical
psychologist with a background in health administration. Dr. Mandel has been involved
in AIDS behavioral research and clinical care since 1981 and was awarded one of the
first NIMH AIDS behavioral research grants in 1983. Since then, he has authored or coauthored 25 articles and 54 presentations at conferences in this field. In 1987, he was
given the Hedda Bolgar Achievement Award honoring professional achievement in
social-clinical psychology. He has lectured internationally on the psychosocial impact of
HIV disease, participated in numerous AIDS-related training activities, and consulted on
AIDS-related programs in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.
May 9th, 2007 7pm; Location TBA
Dr. Uwe Jacobs, PhD (Psychology)
Survivors International, Director
Uwe Jacobs, Ph.D., has been working with Survivors International for the past 10 years
and has provided services for well over 100 survivors of torture from many different
countries and has developed and implemented a variety of programs for survivors. He is
both a clinical neuropsychologist and a psychotherapist. He is an expert on the
psychological and neuropsychological assessment of asylum seekers and has written and
published guidelines on this topic (see SI publications). Dr. Jacobs drafted the chapters
on the psychological and neuropsychological sequelae of torture for the currently existing
international guidelines for the examination of torture published by the UN High
Commissioner (Istanbul Protocol) and for the handbook on assessment of asylum seekers
by Physicians for Human Rights. Prior to becoming Director of SI, Dr. Jacobs developed
other programs for disadvantaged populations. He founded and directed the Homeless
Assessment Program through the Wright Institute, Berkeley. He served as the
psychological consultant in developing the Life After Exoneration Project (LAEP), a
national program for wrongfully convicted ex-prisoners. He conducted workshops and
needs assessments with exonerees in New York and Chicago. Dr. Jacobs has also
published in the area of psychotherapy process research. Dr. Jacobs has served as an
Adjunct Faculty at the Wright Institute, Berkeley since 1997 and maintains an
independent practice in Berkeley.
Cheers,
Susan Meffert MD, MPH
UCSF Resident in Psychiatry
smeffert@gmail.com