مجلس التعليم » مؤتمر «تحديات الانفتاح المعرفي» يؤكد ضرورة تفعيل برامج وقائية للحد من خطورة التكنولوجيا المعاصرة

14-11-2018

Muscat Daily

MUSCAT - Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) kicked off its second counselling and guidance conference on Tuesday, under the auspices of Sayyid Dr Sultan bin Yarub al Busaidi, advisor for Health Affairs in the Ministry of Health.

In her opening speech at the three-day event, held under the theme, ‘The Challenges to Openness of Knowledge’, Dr Suad Mohammed al Lawati, head of Conference Committee said, “It gives us great pleasure to have this event in the days leading to the sultanate’s 48th National Day.

“Statistics indicate that a large proportion of people visiting health clinics suffer from psychological difficulties. These difficulties cause a large humanitarian, societal and economic burden to the community.”

These burdens can be reduced when integrating a counselling service with primary healthcare, she said.

“It goes without saying that professionals who offer these services would need do to so in accordance with global standards, which further underlines the importance of this conference.

“Many researchers from around the world are participating in this conference and they bring immense scientific experience gained from their work in universities around the world.”

Key speaker Jeffrey P Prince, University of California, Berkeley, delivered a talk titled ‘Integrating Counselling and Mental Health into medical Care Teams: A Global Challenge’. Prince noted that the increasing prevalence and severity of mental health conditions has become an urgent, global concern.

“Unfortunately, most of these conditions continue to go untreated or ignored for a number of reasons. Resultantly, this problem continues to worsen as counselling and healthcare professionals fail to work together to provide effective identification, prevention and treatment.”