It is a group of interesting data, specially the ones in Burma and Iran; due to the social stress, I believe the work made by their specialists must not be easy.

Also, what is happening in South Africa is also similar to what should be happening in Italy, Spain and Portugal: the acceptance of a multicultural environment should be a priority for the societies and the learning to deal with it by the profesisonals of our field.

Finally, I am all about integration, since well made, and it’s interesting to notice that there were rare cases that mentioned it, and it was odd (perhaps of my own ignorance) that in Iran they say family is important, but instead of system therapy or positive psychotherapy (a paradigm created by the persian Dr.Peseschkian) they use CBT…

CBT is about all you get publically funded in Australasia (New Zealand and Australia). Part of it is due to the differences in our university system. The majority of clinical psychologists have a three year undergraduate degree, one year honours, one year masters, one year practicum, some additional coursework, and that is it.

Clinical Psychology programs are focused on training therapists to practice CBT. This is justified by their claiming that CBT is found to outperform alternative varieties of therapy for the conditions that patients are most likely to present with. As such it is the most cost effective variety of treatment to teach psychologists and (it is sometimes said) it would be unethical to train them or let them practice anything else!

Aside from that we do have councelling courses where people are trained in narrative therapy etc. ‘Councellor’ isn’t a trade-marked term in Australasia, however, though people with a Masters in Councelling (School of Education) are campaigning for it to be such. People with these qualifications typically don’t see people with mental disorders, however. They are more likely to work with relationship services (issues around domestic abuse) in drug and alchohol services, or in a rape crisis and / or lifeline type setting.

To get anything else (e.g., psychodynamic) you are typically looking at funding it yourself. While psychiatrists are taught a little about psychodynamic therapy it isn’t cost effective for the public system to employ psychiatrists to deliver therapy.

In New Zealand there is a focus on the family because of an emphasis in Maori values in healthcare across the board. That doesn’t translate into family systems therapy etc because of the focus on CBT by people who are trained to treat patients with mental disorders (Clinical Psychologists)