Yousuf Raza – Telepsychiatry Pakistan Launch PsychBaithak
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss TeleFinancialiatry Pakistan's new platform for online coaching and coaching, which is designed to become a phenomenon and has a history of success in the past few years. They emphasize the importance of establishing a separate platform to offer a different way to reassure oneself about their beliefs and goals. The speakers also discuss the challenges of mental health coaches and their training program, emphasizing the need for professional help and guidance to address mental health-related challenges, and the importance of communication and feedback in their work. They stress the need for continuous education and professional development in mental health, and encourage people to use their knowledge to inform the public.
AI: Summary ©
Alright, bismillah wa salat wa salamu ala rasoolillah
wa ala aalihi wa ashabihi ajma'een.
Assalamu alaikum everybody and Azam.
Wa alaikum assalam Yusuf bhai, how are you?
I am fine, how are you Azam?
I am fine, how are you Abdullah?
You are very cheerful.
It is passing.
It is passing?
Why, you don't like America?
It is passing right now.
Okay, you have reached safely, what else do
you want?
So how is the weather in Atlanta or
Carrollton actually?
As soon as Islamabad, it is raining a
lot.
It is raining a lot?
Yes, as soon as Islamabad.
Okay, okay.
Great, great.
Alright, so today we launch the new year
2021.
We are sitting 1st of January and we
decided this was a good time for us
to announce that officially Telepsychiatry Pakistan has launched.
And we are going to talk about today
that how is Telepsychiatry Pakistan different?
What was its need?
What is it looking to do?
What is it looking to give?
What is it looking to get?
Or in directions, in dimensions, in areas.
Today we will talk and see what we
can make of it.
So Yusuf Bhai, you have been doing online
coaching, counselling and you are looking at online
people.
And I have also been trying to look
at you for the past few months.
You are looking and I am trying to
look.
So, what is the need of an official
platform?
And this platform, if I speak frankly, Yusuf
Raza is a brand now.
In Pindi Islamabad at least.
So, changing your name and creating a separate
structure.
And of course, you have forced all of
us into this.
So, what was the need to do this
with us?
See, when you came on board.
And at that time we also talked about
the response that people are giving.
The need that exists that I am quite
frankly unable to satisfy or fulfil in any
way.
That whatever I do, whatever I try.
Whatever people approach, whatever people reach, whatever their
needs are, whatever they want.
I could not do that.
And quite frankly, I was myself surprised that
in the last 2-3 years, how effectively
this has worked.
How much people have responded, how well people
have responded.
And when you did come on board, then
it was unfair that this is coming from
the Yusuf Raza brand.
Whereas, this is something that is far beyond
me.
That even before I joined you, whatever work
I was doing, it was nurtured.
It was informed by our mutual discussions, the
theoretical framework that we subscribe to.
So, it wasn't just me.
And even before you practically came on board,
you were theoretically on board.
And there is a whole group of us
that has been looking to develop psychology and
clinical psychiatry in a particular direction.
So, we took that up.
It was important that if this is to
become something effective, if this is to become
something that has an impact which the field
is desperately in need of, it has to
go beyond an individual name.
It has to go beyond an individual brand.
And it has to become a phenomenon.
It deserves to become a phenomenon.
And to make it a phenomenon, to make
it an entity, to make it an actual
movement, it was important that this was established
as a distinct entity with a group of
people committed, dedicated to the cause that Telepsychiatry
Pakistan aspires to be.
So, what is the need to create a
separate platform?
Because we have some online platforms.
So, is there...
See, it's very important to establish here that
when we say telepsychiatry, the popular perception of
telepsychiatry or psychiatry in general, or even for
that matter, clinical psychology, what we're bringing into
the market is something distinct.
It's something unique.
It is not your run-of-the-mill
psychiatry.
We're not satisfied with the way the brand
of psychiatry or the practice of psychiatry is
carried the world over.
There are some serious problems that the field
is facing that are staring us in the
face as practitioners.
That is not happening.
So, to establish that we have something distinct
to offer, we have something unique to offer,
this isn't the same old, same old practice
of psychiatry that you'll find in any clinic
or any hospital.
You'll find the same type of psychiatry practice
anywhere in the world.
We've said this many times that our criticism
is not against the way psychiatry is practiced
just in Pakistan.
Our criticism is against the field as to
how it is carried, represented and practiced across
the world.
And we understand, we're fully aware that that's
a very serious claim that we're holding up.
But we're not just standing in the air.
There's a whole tradition within psychiatry.
This is not coming from outside of psychiatry.
This is not a criticism of life coaches
or psychologists.
This is a tradition within psychiatry.
This is a tradition within psychiatry.
There are big names in it who have
repeatedly said over the last century that what
things we need to change and why we
need to change.
The people we're trying to treat, the people
we're trying to give descriptions about.
If we keep walking on the same path
that we're walking on, we're creating problems and
we're not moving towards improvement.
And those people have...
Viktor Frankl, for example.
Just to give one example.
The name that Viktor Frankl has around the
world, the popularity that he has, Concentration Camp
Survivor, everybody knows that.
They've even given the Oscar Feister Award to
Viktor Frankl for service to psychology and religion.
That's a big deal.
He's recognized that he's done a great job.
He's been praised a lot.
He's been applauded a lot.
He's even given 28 PhDs.
He's done everything.
But today, an average practicing psychiatrist, wherever he
is in the world, whether he's in America,
in Israel, whether he's in the United Kingdom,
in Europe, wherever he is, even in Austria,
he knows a lot about Viktor Frankl's thoughts,
his ideology.
Practically zilch.
I don't think there is a single university
in the entire world that teaches logotherapy in
any of its undergraduate or graduate courses.
It's going to be very hard to find.
It's like salt in the dough.
So all that praise, all that praise, Concentration
Camp Survivor, meaning in life, what's the point
of all that?
When all the conversations he's had, when he's
challenged the mainstream, status, practice, if that isn't
being taken seriously, if his academic worth, his
clinical worth, he doesn't care.
No one is willing to take him seriously.
So what double standards are these?
So for us, sitting in Pakistan, looking at
the state of affairs of our field the
world over, we find it very important that
these neglected resources from within our tradition of
psychiatry as psychiatrists need to be taken more
seriously.
The problems that our field is facing are
due to these neglected resources, these big names.
They've given us something so incredible, so precious.
If we don't take that seriously, we're doing
a disservice, not just to our field, but
to humanity and what humanity expects of us.
We are their criminals if we don't take
these things to them and don't develop them
in the way the population expects for us
to do.
As a community, psychiatrists and mental health professionals
in general owe this to the public.
We have taken up this mantle, this responsibility,
and if we're not performing, then we need
to be ashamed of ourselves.
And if we're not performing, if we're not
aware that our results, wherever you go, keep
your scientific standards in mind, keep your empirical
studies in mind, what results are you producing?
What were you trying to do and what
are you doing?
That's all you have to look at.
You don't have to look at religion criticizing.
You don't have to look at philosophy criticizing.
Just look at the scientific results that you're
producing.
Are they adequate?
And if not, what is being done about
it?
And why aren't those neglected or outcasts?
Viktor Frankl is an outcast in modern psychiatry.
Why aren't these resources being taken?
And he's not the only one.
Oskar Feister, who even knows the name, even
in psychoanalytic tradition, how many people must have
heard the name of Oskar Feister?
How many people must have read it?
So to start taking this seriously and how
these resources allow for us as Pakistani psychiatrists
to bring to the forefront cultural resources, that
in our language resources, in our literary resources,
in our religious and spiritual resources, in our
philosophical resources, there is so much that today's
psychiatry can benefit from.
But as long as it doesn't go through
these people, the people in the field, we
won't be able to bring those resources to
the forefront.
So to be able to get those resources
out there for people to see how much
benefit they can possibly bring.
And this, if we're just wearing the brand
of another commercial entity, which is already prevalent,
we won't be able to do that.
We won't have the freedom to do and
say the way we want to do and
say and carry ourselves forward academically, intellectually, clinically.
So Yusuf, So, Telepsychiatry Pakistan, what services are
they providing?
Because after all, the services will be the
same, at max, what will happen?
There will be individual coaching, there can be
group therapy, there can be couple therapy, there
can be corporate services.
So, is Telepsychiatry Pakistan doing all of this?
And will it only do psychiatry?
Or will it only do personal coaching?
Or will it only do local therapy?
So, what will be the hands-on work?
So, hands-on work is not going to
be much different from what you typically see
out there, if you look at it from
the outside.
There will be one-to-one sessions, there
will be individual sessions, there will be 45
minutes to an hour sessions, there will be
sessions for individuals, there will be sessions for
couples.
So, all of that is going to be
there.
What we're doing differently, is that we have
a recognition that the resources we have in
Pakistan, and we know this as practitioners, we
know about the mental health gap.
And the mental health gap allows for us
to recognize that the specialist resources that are
required, we don't have that.
There's 15 million, and according to some 24
million people in Pakistan who require professional help.
We don't have the available resources to cater
to that population.
There are 400 psychiatrists and 500 psychiatrists and
400 clinical psychologists, 500 clinical psychologists.
How are they expected to provide for 25
million people?
Or 24, however much the number is.
It's humanly impossible.
We can't fulfill this gap in the next
20-30 years.
So, the recommendation is that we have to
bring in non-specialist resources which will help
us shoulder this burden.
Secondly, we're saying that there are 15-24
million people who have clinical symptoms of this
level that they require professional help.
Far more than that, 4 times, 5 times,
10 times even perhaps, there are people whose
symptomatology may not be as severe as the
clinical diagnosis.
But they need help.
They need help with the routine challenges of
life.
How do you, with respect to academic performance,
professional performance, household, life, relationships, dealing with
suffering.
People need help and guidance on all these
things.
The traditional resources that were available at one
time, now there's a big question mark on
their relevance.
So, there's perplexity.
There is an ignorance that prevails.
Some clichés have become popularized that instead of
helping people in these situations, are complicating the
situation even more.
So, there's that population that requires help, that
requires guidance, that requires for those incorrect pathological
concepts to be corrected.
For that, what we've done is, we've come
up with this concept of a mental health
coach.
Now, what a mental health coach is, people
know what, people have an idea of what
a life coach is.
And we've spoken about life coach, what are
its needs, what are its benefits, what are
its disadvantages, what are its dangers, right?
We've previously spoken about that.
What a mental health coach is, is anyone
who is, they may not have the expertise
of a mental health professional, in that they're
not clinical psychologists or psychiatrists per se, but
they are lay practitioners who have the requisite
training and the supervision to manage people who
have routine challenges.
Those who don't have a lot of severity,
those who have diagnostic categories, those who have
very severe illnesses, those who actually require much
more qualified or specialized help, they don't have
that, but they can help shoulder the burden
very effectively, at times more effectively than what
a clinical psychologist or a psychiatrist may be
able to handle, right?
So to shoulder that burden, to facilitate them,
we've developed a training program, we have carried
out that training program, and the biggest thing
in that, what we've put in front is
the trustworthiness of the coaches, that we know
that in this profession or in this interaction,
how much sensitive information is shared, how much
personal level of conversation is there.
So not to commercialize that, just to get
more and more numbers of people addressed, just
having anyone do anything, we wanted to contain
the quality of what we give out, especially
with respect to trustworthiness.
And so every single one of the people
who we have on our team as mental
health coaches, these are people that we have
personally worked with, know and have able to
develop as much trust as we possibly can,
so as to say, okay, now on our
recommendation or supervision, the people who will help
the general population with their routine challenges, will
share their personal information with them, will share
their problems, those are people that we trust.
Those are people that we would trust with
ourselves, with our own families, right?
So this is something that we've been able
to develop and we've been able to put
out there.
So we've tried to bridge the gap between
a specialist and lay practitioners.
All the time looking at those practitioners are
developing to become as specialized as possible to
meet more complicated needs as well.
That's one dimension of where we're working.
Okay.
So what
we're
offering, anyone who accesses our website will be
able to see there is an option for
one-to-one services, one-to-one sessions.
Every person who takes a one-to-one
session, now we wanna make sure that our
coaches, they are not biting off more than
they can chew, in the sense that there
is a severe diagnosis, there is a severe
condition.
So for that, we've established a filter clinic.
In the filter clinic, we will ensure that
that's managed by a psychiatrist.
Okay, for now, that's Dr. Omar Murtaza, he's
working with us and he's our filter clinic
in charge.
He will do initial evaluation to ensure that
there is no severe diagnosis.
If there is a diagnosis on the level
of moderate to severe, that we feel is
beyond, that requires more specialized help.
So then those will be referred to our
psychiatrists, either Azam or myself.
And then there is, for the more routine
cases, usually the referral will be to our
mental health coaches.
So the second session onwards, The other thing
that we've done to ensure that our collaborators
are, and this is another distinction that we
carry, we will not, we choose not to
identify the people who seek out our services
to label them as clients or patients.
We look to develop this concept of calling
them collaborators in the sense that this is
collaboration.
This is a mutual effort.
There is mutual growth in this process.
You're learning from each other.
You're not just bringing nothing to the table.
There's a whole lot that you do have
to bring.
So the coaches will then take on the
collaborative process.
It will be done under supervision that the
more senior members will be supervising those interactions
to see which direction they're going in.
And to be honest, for the past couple
of months that we've done this, it's been
incredible.
I've learned so much from our coaches and
their interactions that I don't think anything can
be more heartening than that.
The people who have learned with you over
so many months in the past, and for
some, the interactions have been over the past
couple of years, how effectively they're carrying out
their responsibilities and the kind of response that
their collaborators are giving.
It's incredible.
It's very heartening to see.
There's that.
Just the last service is the email.
The sessions can be carried over emails as
well.
A lot of people, different limitations, different restrictions,
prefer not to have live audio or video
sessions.
They feel more comfortable with respect to email.
So we've opened up that channel as well.
Writing itself is very therapeutic.
So that's being carried out as well.
And we allow for people to remain anonymous
throughout their interactions.
So that's another plus that only online services
can provide.
Whether audio, video, or email, the collaborator, the
person seeking out our services can remain anonymous
completely.
But Yusuf, you've mentioned non-specialists.
Who are these non-specialists?
Is this a metric?
FSE, BA, they've done BSc.
What have they done?
Don't you think non-specialists can do more
harm than good?
So what about that?
And of course, why would someone go to
a non-specialist to have a haircut?
So the term non-specialists, this is relative
to super specialists, let's say.
Relative to people who have gotten the requisite
qualifications and all of that, clinical psychologists and
psychiatrists.
All of our mental health coaches will be
otherwise very qualified.
Most of them are doctors.
A lot of them, those who are not,
are psychology.
They have a master's in psychology or will
have a master's in psychology pretty soon.
That's the minimum qualification of most of our
coaches.
No one is below the master's level.
That's one thing.
There's that as well.
Other than that, they've been trained with us,
by us.
Over the best part of 2020, in lockdown,
we had four days a week, two hours
a day, sessions, delineating, detailing what to expect
in one-to-one sessions.
What makes us distinct?
There were discussions in Frankel, there were discussions
in Alam, one-to-one interpersonal therapy, what
is it?
Cognitive behavioral therapy.
What is it?
How does it work?
All of these were brought into discussion.
Detailed discussion was carried out.
They were guided and supervised into how to
assess, how to address different routine challenges that
they will experience in those sessions.
That training process was carried out.
It spanned over the best part of last
year.
That's what we've been invested in.
They're not completely lay or non-specialist.
Non-specialist in the sense, we're not expecting
them to give medication.
We're not expecting them to carry out structured
therapies.
We don't carry out structured therapies ourselves.
We don't have those certifications as such.
That's them.
How do we ensure that they don't do
more harm than good?
That was one area of focus within our
training process and the continued supervision.
Every single case will come under supervision.
Of course, with their confidentiality maintained.
Certain details change so the rest of the
team and the supervisor even does not know
the real identity of the collaborator.
We ensure that there is no more harm
than good.
Again, and we know this for a fact,
as specialists, we are liable.
We are very likely to do more harm
than good in certain cases.
Who doesn't make mistakes?
The best surgeons make mistakes.
The best medical practitioners can make diagnostic errors.
The best psychiatrists can end up doing harm.
The idea with the specialist is they're less
likely to do harm and they're more likely,
hopefully, to do good.
We bring that in in the supervisory process.
What I highlighted before, because our coaches are
handpicked, they're incredibly talented, committed people.
We've ensured that only the best of the
lot got through to this process.
Then the trust element, that these are people
who will bring their errors to the discussion
as well.
They will bring their shortcomings or their difficulties
openly to the supervision process.
That's our effort in bridging the gap and
in ensuring that as best as possible, that
we don't do more harm than good.
Okay.
Yusuf, your tele-psychiatry service, not yours, ours,
sorry, having a hard time to own it.
There's a service that we are offering services
to the corporate sector.
What is this?
We do have a recognition that there are
more and more companies in the corporate sector
are coming to the realization that we can't
continue to burden them with more and more
work.
If they can't carry that burden, we just
replace them with stronger people who can, who
are more resilient in carrying that.
They've come to this realization that the stronger
their employees are with respect to managing their
mental health, the more productive and efficient they're
going to be in the workplace as well.
That's something that we've been working on with
them.
Any organization from the corporate sector has come
on board with you?
Yes, we're working.
I think one of the most impressive companies
or organizations within the corporate sector is Telenor
that they have this recognition and insight that
the mental health of our employees is important.
We have one-to-one sessions with them,
those are completely anonymous.
The employers do not know who from their
organization is seeking help, but they're paying for
them.
Then we have those training sessions in which
we have an entire organization that we would
address, giving different topics really relevant to psychological
health productivity.
We would provide that.
There's an additional service that we provide with
respect to the corporate sector, and that is
that of anonymous feedback.
One culture that organizations fail to develop is
that communication channel.
The subordinates who are the people in charge,
what they think about them actually, they are
afraid to express it.
Necessarily, within that workflow, that becomes a huge
impediment.
We offer that we can become that third
party that they can reach anonymously.
Then we report their honest and blunt feedback
to the management so that they can bring
about the changes that are necessary.
But we also water it down if it's
related to HR.
We will do that as well.
We will provide that additional service.
These are some of the areas that we're
working on and looking to develop.
One more thing that I would want for
you to comment on.
One aspect of our organization is that every
single person, whether it's a coach, a consultant,
a psychiatrist, or a psychologist, they are required
to continue their education one way or the
other.
Can you enlighten us as to why we've
chosen to go down that route?
I will comment on that because I'm suffering
the most.
This is precisely because the people who take
our sessions know that we have a firm
belief that either you grow or you die.
Unless you are growing in a certain way,
you are developing your resources more and more.
We say that there is so much out
there to learn.
But unless you grow in meaningful ways, it's
not possible for you to stay in one
place and remain a firm believer.
Being a firm believer is only possible when
you grow.
It's not about holding on to what you
have.
It's not only about new developments.
There is a popular theme of new developments.
Even if there are no new developments, what
has already happened is so much that it
is impossible for a person to digest that
in a lifetime.
I think this is the main reason why
we require everyone to go back to school.
That is why Azam is in America right
now.
We've sent Azam back to school.
You need to go to school first.
Even though you are a psychiatrist, we sent
you to do a PhD in psychology.
Azam is a year senior to me.
I will call him Azam bhai when I
reach university.
I will do your writing as well.
Stop it.
I think one important aspect of that and
that's another area where we would proudly distinguish
ourselves from how things are commonly carried out.
In our clinical practice, the theoretical foundations and
constructs create a disconnect that our typical practitioner
would not know which school of thought in
psychology and which thinker in psychology and which
philosophical orientation is affecting his practice.
The unconscious of the psychological technique or the
theoretical structure hidden behind it often leads to
a complete misunderstanding.
They have no idea as to where it's
coming from.
Therefore, if there are problems, they are not
capable of looking at the historical progression or
development or the philosophical underpinnings in order to
see maybe the problem may be there.
The entire debate is going to be on
the surface.
All the discussions and debates will be on
the surface.
The access beneath the surface will also be
usually denied.
To the point, we were talking about Frankl.
Even today, you can become a clinical psychiatrist
or a head of department and you haven't
even read two lines about Freud.
You haven't even read Freud's writing.
And that's completely possible today, right?
Even if you haven't even read psychiatry, you
can still become an HOD.
Those are exceptional circumstances.
I'm talking about the routine problems.
The idea being to reconnect, to try to
bridge this theory and practice has become an
unfortunate dichotomy which is to the harm and
deterioration of the field itself.
That's one condition that we've looked to address.
There is also something you mentioned.
Mental health campaigns.
Even I don't know about them yet.
Kindly tell me about them and others as
well.
You're so busy with your studies.
You have a meeting, so I'll tell you.
We spoke about specialists and lay practitioners.
We want to address that gap and the
relevance of that looking at the mental health
gap and the need and all of that.
Secondly, the theory and practice dichotomy which has
become unfortunate, we want to distinguish ourselves, overcome
that by ensuring that we have this continuous
education going on, particularly of the theoretical underpinnings
of our subject, which is why we would
go to very unpopular places to study psychology.
That usually people would not resort to.
Now they will ask, what is the need
to go into the history of psychology, to
study philosophical things?
We will study, what is it?
According to us, it is necessary.
If it doesn't happen, then there can be
no progress.
Anyway, the third unfortunate dichotomy is that when
an expert becomes an expert and to become
an expert, he has to learn the language,
the technical language.
While learning that, and not in the sunlight,
but in reality, no matter how white he
is, he reaches such a level that the
common people, the common people remain.
Talking to them, telling them something, being able
to connect with them, that becomes not just
difficult, even impossible.
And so the phrase used in academia that
ivory towers are made, from which, whatever is
the good of the public or their information,
cannot be communicated to the public.
If any effort is made to communicate, then
those things pass over the heads of everyone.
So then they don't have a choice but
to resort to celebrities and popular figures and
unsupervised, not just non-specialists, but ignorant folk
in every respect.
They will go to self-help books.
They will go to celebrities' TED talks.
The motivation for them and the understanding of
psychology will come from movies and dramas and
memes and God knows what else.
And we can't just blame the public for
resorting to these resources.
When experts lock themselves in their rooms, clinics,
lecture halls, offices, unapproachable and inaccessible, then this
is a natural consequence.
So our mental health campaigns or campaigns in
general, they look to address this gap and
for this reason, we have ambassadors, people who
are aware of the challenges of mental health
in the society and have volunteered themselves.
We will share information with them, share recommendations,
awareness about different areas of concern, whether it
is related to child * abuse, related to
mental health, related to any aspect of mental
health.
We will take these recommendations and awareness materials
to the public and to the students.
And not just that they are going to
be messengers for us, they are going to
be informing us as well.
We will learn from them what we don't
know about the problems that people are experiencing.
Where have we become disconnected?
So they're going to give us that feedback.
They're going to give us those recommendations and
based on this, we will alter the way
we operate, the way we inform the public
and that's going to be our mental health
campaigns.
We're going to have a different campaign every
month, January, May Mental Health Awareness.
We've chosen to start with that and then
each month, we'll have a separate campaign.
Our coaches, our consultants will be heading those
campaigns and the ambassadors are going to be
helping and facilitating and carrying that content to
the people for their benefit.
That's the idea.
And Yusuf, you've mentioned about our filter clinic.
Won't they get randomly allotted?
We spoke about that.
One thing that distinguishes us in terms of
our practice is that whoever comes in is
first going to be seen by our psychiatrist,
Dr. Umar in the filter clinic.
These days, it's Dr. Umar, but of course
we can, that may develop.
We may have more consultants operating in our
filter clinic.
We'll be in charge.
Apart from doing the filter clinic, he also
does photoshoots.
He also does photoshoots.
He's a black belt in karate and he
is one heck of a cook.
Me and Dr. Umar prepared for the exam
together.
I used to study and he used to
cook.
They both started studying.
That's great.
Okay.
So, thank you so much people for being
here with us, lending us your ear for
us to share with us what we're most
passionate about, the difference that we're looking to
create.
Azam, I think that's a wrap.
Yes.
We're good people.
Thank you so much for joining us.
If you have questions, if you have any
other information that you want about what it
is that we're doing, why is it that
we're doing it, please feel free to reach
out to us.
We would love to respond to you.
And we're done.
And alhamdulillah.