Mental health is an urgent issue across every country and society. So it was a great learning experience for us – and both fun, tough, challenging, and rewarding for the professionals and families from Kazakhstan to be able to participate in the 33rd edition of the summer school for phychoanalysis, organised the School of Psychoanalysis in Almaty.

NWA contributed with two lectures and two workshops that allowed the participants to learn more about the psychosomatic symptoms of trauma, about building blocks for creating strategies for mental health and mental health literacy, about emotion-focused therapy individual, group, and organisational practice – and about experiences of improving mental resilience for both frontline workers (of all kinds).

We got to both draw upon work in Europe with both ISRICM-EU about helping vulnerable groups and MentaStress mental training, with WHO Europe and the Strategic Partner’s Initiative for Data and Digital Health on burnout, with ISEFT about professional capacity building – and learned so much about new ways to build mental health literacy in such a diverse group in age, background, history, and more.

We look forward to visit this amazing country and culture again – there are so much to share and combine.