Research reports

Addressing Human Rights Violations A Public Mental Health Perspective on Helping Torture Survivors in Nepal

MARK VAN OMMEREN, BHOGENDRA SHARMA, DINESH PRASAIN, and BHAVA N. POUDYAL

Transcultural Psychiatry

Cultural Challenges to Psychosocial Counselling Nepal

June 2005

WIETSE A. TOL & MARK J.D. JORDANS

Centre for Victims of Torture, Nepal (CVICT)/Transcultural

Psychosocial Organization (TPO), Amsterdam

SUSHAMA REGMI & BHOGENDRA SHARMA

Centre for Victims of Torture, Nepal (CVICT)

Abstract

This article describes the way in which the practice of psychosocial counselling was adapted culturally to the context of Nepal within the Centre for Victims of Torture, Nepal (CVICT). After a brief description of the Nepali setting and CVICT’s counselling and training approach and the relationship of its psychosocial counselling intervention with existing methods of dealing with psychosocial problems, the cultural challenges of implementing psychosocial counselling and our response to them are sketched along with concepts deemed important in psychosocial counselling. A discussion follows in which the authors’ stance on the export of psychosocial counselling to non-western cultures is outlined.