Notes from the WFMH Collaborating Centers
In recent correspondence with the Federation’s Secretariat WFMH Collaborating Centers described current issues in their work:
Prof. Donna E. Stewart, Lillian Love Chair in Women’s Health at the University of Toronto, Canada, linked good mental health for women with good physical health and social justice. She included among important international issues in women’s health the lack of education for girl children in many developing countries; poverty – 70% of the world’s poor are women with young children; violence against women; and the need for equity in opportunity, in representation in governance, and in pay and job promotion.
Prof. Brian Robertson of the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, wrote about a new Research Center for the Study of Violence and Mental Health which he established last year. He commented on the lack of funding for projects in Southern Africa, and felt that collaboration with researchers from the Northern Hemisphere would be helpful. He is also concerned about the lack of African representation at international meetings, not just because of cost and exchange rate difficulties, but because of inattention by conference organizers.
James Lavelle from the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, headed by Prof. Richard Mollica, described work to support the Center for Torture Survivors at Bellevue Hospital in New York. The Program is also involved with the collection of data for a National Institutes of Health study on the exposure to violence of political detainees who entered the US during the 1990s. A project called “IPC+” takes lessons learned at the HPRT Indochinese Psychiatry Clinic to four communities in Massachusetts which have large refugee populations. An innovative project with a statewide lawyers’ consortium is providing help to asylum seekers and their families. HPRT is also in the third year of a training project for physicians in Bosnia-Herzegovina, funded by the World Bank.
Jorge Arroche, Executive Director of STARTTS (Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors), works on issues involving refugee health care in Australia. He forwarded an editorial he wrote for the magazine Refugee Transitions discussing the current polarization of the refugee debate in Australian politics; action on developing national standards for torture and trauma services; and a successful fundraising appeal for new work with children and adolescents.
Prof. Lorraine Dennerstein, of the Office for Gender and Health at the University of Melbourne, Australia, wrote to describe her research on the study of women’s reproductive ageing, including research funded by the Alzheimer’s Foundation of the USA on early cognitive changes associated with ageing.
Prof. John Copeland of the Institute for Human Ageing at the University of Liverpool, UK, mentioned multiple issues in mental health and ageing. The fate of older people in conflict areas is a serious problem. The question of standards in nursing homes is deservedly attracting attention. In Western countries the provision of adequate pensions for future retirees is a matter of growing concern and will have an impact on their quality of life. In Sweden, a 15-year study of a cohort of older people appears to show that the prevalence of treatable depression rises with age but is largely unrecognized and not treated. “This problem is widespread and is part of the problem of stigma in ageing. The mentally ill old are being doubly stigmatized.”