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Training and Education Department
The Training and Education Department seeks to create a corps of community-oriented mental health professionals, competent in using the mental health and human rights approach for deployment throughout the field of mental health care services in both the state and non-governmental sectors. It also seeks to establish an efficient Regional Institute of Community Mental Health and Human Rights, providing training for Palestine and the Middle East through furthering the Department's cooperation with international universities (including universities in the Middle East and North Africa). When GCMHP was established in 1990, the primary staff recognized the absence of training institutes in Gaza that could adequately prepare mental health professionals. In an effort to span this gap, the Programme embarked on an ambitious training program, attracting teachers from prestigious educational institutions around the world, who provided in-house training to the GCMHP staff so that they could offer quality services to the Palestinian population. Since then, the capacity of the Palestinian staff to conduct its own culturally sensitive training has increased. Provisions have also been made to upgrade the educational level of staff, with the Postgraduate Diploma in Community Mental Health and Human Rights MA and Ph.D. and through participation in international conferences, workshops, and seminars. The Training and Education Department had increasingly been called upon to train other Palestinian health care providers in various mental health skills. One of the early training activities offered by the GCMHP was a three-month course in Community Mental Health Nursing to health workers in the public sector. Twelve nurses attended the course and were subsequently employed by both the Ministries of Health and by non-governmental organizations. In 1994, a one-year course in community mental health was offered to twelve social workers, psychologists, nurses, and doctors, all of whom were employed in different governmental and non-governmental organizations. These promising results encouraged the Training Department to organize another course in community mental health for nurses and other health professionals. On completion of the course, the Palestinian Ministry of Education employed all the students as mental health professionals in health institutions and as school counselors. Their success convinced us of the need to introduce a Post-Graduate Diploma in Community Mental Health and Human Rights for mental health workers in a variety of professional backgrounds, in order to address more systematically the staggering lack of psychiatric training in Palestine. GCMHP began to offer its two-year Post-Graduate Diploma in Community Mental Health and Human Rights in 1997, accredited by the Islamic University and the Palestinian Ministry of Higher Education. Currently, senior staff from seven overseas universities provides the teaching for the ten modules offered, working jointly with local trainers and representing the disciplines of Anthropology and Psychology and the domains of Community Mental Health, Education, Psychiatry, Social Work, and Nursing. The initial project will run for four years, after which GCMHP expects to be able to provide all the teaching from among its own staff, while still maintaining its international links to ensure that specialists in the field of mental health and human rights will regularly be in residence. The long-term aim is to establish an Arab Institute for Community Mental Health that will serve as a focal point of learning and training in the Middle East in the fields of mental health and human rights. All GCMHP training is designed to ensure that candidates have adequate knowledge of state of the art theories, principles, and treatment and prevention strategies used in addressing mental health concerns. The training is based on a spirit of active participation and self-learning by the candidates themselves. GCMHP courses are unique in their multi-disciplinary approach. Early in 1996, a series of courses in mental health and human rights was conducted with the police force and intelligence service. These courses aimed at raising awareness among the police of the bio-psycho-social consequences of torture and human rights violations. They also aimed at providing the candidates with communication skills and peaceful problem-solving skills. The National Mental Health Plan of Palestine emphasizes the need to de-institutionalize mental health services and introduce community-based care through the establishment of six Community Health Centers in the West Bank and five in the Gaza Strip. According to this plan, each center would consist of one psychiatrist, two social workers, two mental health nurses, two psychologists, and an occupational therapist. The proposal highlights the need for an adequate number of professionals trained in the field of community mental health, an aim that GCMHP hopes to serve. Long-Term Objectives As noted, the long-term aim is to move toward the foundation of an Arab Institute of Community Mental Health and Human Rights that will attract international students and researchers. The institute will be staffed by qualified professionals from the community. In order to prepare local trainers for this mission, the Programme will organize distance-learning educational opportunities for Ph.D. and Masters degrees in the area of mental health, enabling Palestinian trainers to achieve international academic requirements and replace the international teaching staff. At the same time, GCMHP would continue to rely on its international links for supervision of research and external evaluation of student performance. Most recently, GCMHP has signed a contract with the Medical School of Suez Canal University "Egypt", which has accredited the Diploma in Community Mental Health as part of its Master's degree in Psychiatry. This will permit doctors who hold a GCMHP Diploma to earn such a degree after completing courses in psychiatry and neurology and writing a thesis. Such study will be conducted though distance learning. The same Arrangements have been applied with Flinders University of South Australia, Australia and the Islamic University-Gaza. Flinders University accredits the diploma as 2/3 of Master degree in disability studies.
We have also established higher education links with Oxford University and North Hampton Community Trust, United Kingdom, supported by the British Council.
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