Psychiatry Across Borders – WG – European Federation of Psychiatric Trainees

Our current projects:

EFPT Refugee and Mental Health Trainee Survey

Educational tool about trauma and PTSD for trainees and patients

Co-Chairs:

Uğur Cikrikcili and Iryna Frankova

Working group picture at the Bristol Forum 2016

Background :

There has not been a single year since the second world war, when individuals did not have to flee their country of origin due to armed conflict, war, generalized violence, human rights violations or persecution. Some refugees are compelled to live in exile for years, with little or no hope of returning to their country of origin. Unfortunately, the number of individuals facing forced displacement each year has been increasing. Their situation is often so perilous and intolerable that they cross national borders to seek safety in nearby countries, and thus become internationally recognized as “refugees”. The protection of refugees includes respect to their basic human rights.

The ‘Psychiatry Across Borders’ (PAB) working group – part of the European Federation of Psychiatric Trainees (EFPT) was initiated on EFPT Forum 2016, Antwerp, Belgium. We are interested in mental health of forcibly displaced persons, asylum seekers and refugees.

Aim:

to improve training of Psychiatric trainees in Europe, in order to take better care of refugees (transcultural psychiatry, mental health of forcibly displaced people)

Plans:

to create an EFPT Refugee and Mental Health Trainee Survey. The aim is to get feedback from psychiatric trainees’ regarding their experience and knowledge of issues related to the mental health of refugees and trauma prevention in this population. Do trainees have previous training? Do they feel confident assessing and treating mental health disorders in refugees according? What kind of experiences of working with refugees, do they have? This is only small portion of questions from this survey. We anticipate that training in that field is insufficient and the answers form trainees can help to detect and point out problematic zones.
to create report how psychiatric care systems can provide help for refugees in Europe (Italy, Romania, Greece, Turkey, Belgium and France) …
to provide information for trainees about how to conquer appropriate skills for working with migrants in order to improve their knowledge in this field.