Reflecting the potential role of family counselling in addressing emotional issues in Afghan youth

Working with family conflicts can be a challenging task for counsellors. In a collectivist society, such as Afghanistan, where interactions between people of the opposite sex are highly regulated, counselling sessions with an individual involved in a family conflict may not be very effective unless conducted in a culturally sensitive manner. As asking for help from professionals may be considered to be ‘lunatic’, as well as a potential threat to the honour of the family, family counselling is not often easy to carry out and may actually pose risks to the client and to the counsellor.

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Witnessing the vulnerabilities and capabilities of one Afghan woman : Cultural values as a source of resilience in daily life

This personal reflection on my daily interactions with an Afghan woman, Bibi Hawa, aims to describe how I witnessed her psychological distress, partly manifested as chest pain, and her resilience to this distress in a particular Afghan socio-cultural and political context. My reflections shed light on the importance of finding a space in which resilience can be built.

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The impact of addiction on Afghan youths

Drug addiction is a problem in many countries, affecting many lives, damaging the addicted individual and affecting their families and communities. In underdeveloped countries, such as Afghanistan, there are often no appropriate systems for rehabilitating drug addicted people. Most hospitals tend to use detoxification as the main treatment programme, and there remains a large gap between demand and treatment services. In this case study, the author discusses the possibilities for dealing with the various causes of substance abuse and recommends solutions.

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Active coping with trauma and domestic violence : How Afghan women survive

This personal reflection examines the author’s experience while conducting qualitative research on the traumatic life events and coping among the female workers in Kabul University’s dormitory for female students. It also describes the experiences of one of the study’s participants, a woman who suffered from severe domestic violence and enacted various ways of active coping.

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Trauma at home : The importance of listening

This short case history describes the counselling process with an adolescent girl in Afghanistan. It illustrates the lack of sexual education for children and adolescents in Afghan society and reaffirms that listening is the most important part of counselling. Listening includes showing that you believe the client, being careful with questions and giving the client the feeling that she does not have to justify herself.

 

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Starting as a counsellor

Girls living in juvenile rehabilitation centres, especially as a consequence of escaping from home or sexual contact, can be difficult to engage in counselling sessions. Often, this can be related to the idea that help seeking from a psychologist or counsellor is equivalent to being labelled as ‘crazy’. Added to that is the belief that family secrets must stay at home, so girls feel uncomfortable speaking about their problems. As a result, counsellors’ attempts may lead to failure. This personal reflection shows the author’s first experiences working with clients.

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An Afghan woman’s story: Fighting for a better life

In Afghanistan, most families strongly believe that their female members should stay at home concern themselves with housework. In general, women are anything but encouraged to get an education and/or have a professional career. This personal reflection shows that Afghani women, with support, can develop their competences and enjoy life.

 

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The girl who wanted to stand-up in class and speak to her classmates

There are several factors that can lead to social anxiety disorder (fear of being judged or rejected), such as genetics, environmental factors, learned experiences, deficits in social skills, cognitive factors and/or culture. Considering all these factors, there are many people prone to develop social anxiety disorder in Afghanistan. In a recent study conducted at Herat University, it was shown that many students suffer from social anxiety disorder.

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From the editors . . . An introduction to a Special Issue : A focus on mental health and psychosocial support in Afghanistan

Afghanistan continues to face extraordinary challenges after almost 40 years of continuous armed conflict. Despite these difficulties, many Afghans have been working tirelessly to protect, rebuild, develop and maintain their national institutions. One such effort was the National Strategy for a Mentally Healthy Afghanistan [Government of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GOIRA), & Ministry of Public Health (MoPH), 2009], which recognised the impact of conflict on mental health and psychosocial wellbeing.

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Trauma and trauma care in Europe

The European countries have a long history of exposure to large-scale trauma. In the early 1990s the increasing awareness of the consequences of trauma within the mental health community led to the foundation of local societies for psychotraumatology across Europe and the European Society of Traumatic Stress Studies (ESTSS), which celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2018. The focus of this article is to describe the current state of care for survivors of trauma in the 15 European countries where ESTSS member societies have been established.

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