Mental illness casts shadow over Afghans struggling to cope with decades of war [Reuters.com]

Samantha Sangenito 10/21/164:00 AM

[Photo by Teseum]

When psychiatrist Ghulam Sarwar Sakha first met a 23-year-old woman who had been studying in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz when it was stormed by the Taliban last year, the trainee teacher could not drown out the voices in her head.

Locked in her room to avoid the fighting that raged on the streets outside, the student started hallucinating.

"'I receive warnings and threats. They say I am bad girl. I don't wear a hijab. They are going to come and get me'," said Sakha, recalling the words of his patient.

It became so bad that her parents took her to a doctor who prescribed medicine for a physical ailment. But in reality, she was suffering from schizophrenia, said Sakha, who treated the woman during a visit to his homeland to do charity work.

[For more of this story, written by Zabihullah Noori, go to http://www.reuters.com/article...health-idUSKCN12J1M2]

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Corinna WestMember

It would be much better to refer voice hearers to other voice hearers. See Intervoice or the Healing Voices movie. The psych drugs increase risk of further psychosis and the idea of schizophrena makes people lose hope. Psychosis is an event, not a person. The disability label becomes self-fulfilling. Not trauma informed, at all to promote sz diagnoses.

10/21/1610:58 AM

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