Mental Health in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq = الصحة النفسية في أقليم كردستان العراق

Psychotherapy in the Kurdistan region of Iraq (KRI): Preferences and expectations of the Kurdish host community, internally displaced- and Syrian refugee community

“…So far, the most pronounced disorders in both host and refugee communities, have been PTSD and depression among other disorders (Bolton, 2013;Ibrahim & Hassan, 2017;Naja et al, 2016). Furthermore, mental health treatment in Iraq is scarce, centralized, urbanized and relatively recent, with its first initiatives starting in the late 1970s (Al-Salihy & Rahim, 2013). While some sources report one psychiatrist per 300,000 inhabitants before the year of 2003 (Sadik et al, 2010), others estimate that there are fewer than 1,000 psychiatrists in all of Iraqmost of whom are located in hospital settings, do not offer therapy due to time constraints and rely heavily on prescribing medication (Bolton, 2013).…”

“…Although there is currently a rapid transformation in the health system and efforts from international key players and local counterparts alike to offer better psychiatric care, several challenges are still present (Aziz et al, 2014), such as limited training, mental health education, and the absence of formal and official evaluations of the existing psychiatric services in the KRI (Al-Salihy & Rahim, 2013). Additionally, the mental health system in the KRI is heavily dominated by bureaucratic and hierarchical systems (Al-Salihy & Rahim, 2013), making it harder to allocate services where they are actually needed. In a study by Aziz et al (2014), it was found that Syrian refugees living in the KRI generally had scored high on social relationships, indicating a good level of social support, but had lower scores on domains related to physical and mental health.…”