Straight talking

zoom

Dr Raymond H. Hamden counts clinical and forensic psychologist, radio show host, and NASA consultant among his job titles.

Medical Times hears about the status of therapy in the Middle East, the view from the psychologist's chair, and Hamden's take on the practitioners making a living at the expense of their patients.

Give me an overview of your practice's areas of interest.

The organisation I have here is the Human Relations Institute. We cover just about everything in psychology, from clinical, forensic, educational and organisational, health psychology and speech and language.

We have 13 members of staff, most of whom are bilingual. Our focus is to supply that cultural understanding.

As a ‘newer' aspect of medicine, do you find the cultural approach to psychology in the Middle East differs?

When I first came here 18 years ago, there was a stigma to seeing a psychologist, so I would get a lot of people from the Gulf who would say ‘I don't want to see you during working hours, but when you're closed so no-one can recognise me.'

I used to stay closed three days a week, so I could see everybody. Now we don't have that. People are more educated.

Has that education helped your radio show become more established in the community?

Well, the radio show started eight years ago, but it wasn't that I instantly came in and talked psychology, because society just wouldn't have been ready for it.

It would have been too frightening for people to be on the air talking about real situations - even within medical and psychological terms.

Have you struggled to balance cultural constraints on an open talk show?

There are still constraints, but we've come a long way. The censoring of the government has become more flexible, to recognise that we're not a ‘dirty' talk show.

We keep the content in a professional realm. We screen the calls to make sure the audience is keeping things clean and we've never, yet, had anybody abuse the show, make an issue of the problems or condemn us.

Our listeners are usually an intelligent audience.

With guests on the daytime show, more censoring is in place. We can still talk about alcohol problems, but it has to be within a medical setting.

With the younger listeners, I see problems that I didn't have to deal with until I was in my late twenties and thirties, affecting them in their teenage years.

Being of my age, it's difficult for me to keep up with the latest terminology. My co-producer fortunately is much younger than me, so she translates.

In clinical terms, do you feel psychology is adequately recognised and used in the Middle East?

There's not enough awareness among clinicians about psychology because it's not viewed at its top value. Here there is still that mentality that doesn't view therapy as a science.

Psychology is not talk therapy - you can do that in a coffee shop. The treatment protocol is very scientific.

Is psychiatry still favoured by regional physicians?

In all practices of medicine, the individual practitioner will have a preference about where to refer. Some people prefer to go to psychiatry immediately - they give the pseudo-image that the quick fix of medicine works.

But then they have a lot of repeat situations. We're seeing practitioners that are seeing too many patients and rather than treating them, they are just managing the caseload.

Print | Email | Discuss this article |

USER COMMENTS (0 COMMENTS)

POST A COMMENT

CLICK HERE TO POST A COMMENT

Add your Comment All posts are sent to the administrator for review and are published only after approval. ArabianBusiness.com reserves the right to remove any comment at any time for any reason. Please keep your responses appropriate and on topic.
Name *
Remember me on this computer
Email *	(Your email address will not be published)
City
Country
Subject *
Comment *
Notify me of further comments
Security Code *
Please click post only once - your comment will not be published immediately.