Improving Mental Health Care in Kenya

In October this year, Brown  University welcomed two third year registrars from Moi Medical School to complete training within the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Alpert Medical School.  Drs. Sarah Bahati Standa and Michael Makali Wekesa came to the US for five weeks as part of a training agreement with Moi via AMPATH.  As part of this agreement, registrars receive their child, adolescent, gerontology and neurology rotations at Brown.  For the Child rotation, registrars spent a week each at the Children’s Partial Hospital Program at Bradley Hospital, working with Drs Majczak and Walters.  Bradley is one of the nation’s oldest free standing children’s psychiatric hospitals and the program provides milieu based treatment to 7-12 year old children with severe mental illness and their families.  For the adolescent rotation, registrars spent a week on the Adolescent Inpatient Program at Butler Hospital working with Dr. Van Schwalkwyk.  At this renowned free standing adult psychiatric hospital, they learned to provide diagnostic clarification and to stabilize adolescents in acute psychiatric crisis so that they were safe enough to be transferred to a lower level of care.  On the gerontology service, registrars worked with Drs. Halt and Marino, and focused on the specialty of psychiatric disorders in the elderly including various stages of dementia and Alzheimer’s; senile psychosis, depression and anxiety. On the neurology service, Drs. Weinman, Friedman and Cahill provided a wide diversity of neurology experiences, including patients with parkinsonism and other movement disorders, behavioral neurology in an inpatient psychiatric setting and consultation in a large general hospital outpatient neurology service. Over the past 5 years, 4 cohorts of Registrars from Moi have traveled to Brown for those portions of their training that are less available in Kenya, to great benefit to participants in this unique training and cultural exchange opportunity.