First Pan-African mental health conference opens

The first continent-wide mental health conference opened on Monday in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, attended by more than 150 delegates, Le Soleil newspaper reported. Psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, anthropologists, pharmacists, social workers and other specialists from 50 countries in Africa, Europe, US and Canada are participating in the three-day meeting. They will explore the state of mental health on the continent, take steps to make existing treatments more "visible" to Africans, and compile a register listing all African mental health practitioners and their approaches to the treatment of mental illness. The conference will include sessions on psychiatry, neurology, psychoanalysis traditional medicine and the reintegration of patients into society, the paper reported. The conference, the paper added, will be like a "collective therapy session" which aims to find approaches that are "pragmatic and considered culturally acceptable by Africans."