It’s been an exciting summer for three of our up-and-coming child psychiatrists who have landed a number of competitive scholarships and awards.
The young trio – a medical student and aspiring psychiatrist, and two trainees in child psychiatry at AKU – recently attended the prestigious World Congress of the International Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions (
IACAPAP) in Prague, Czech Republic, where they received news of their awards.
The University runs Pakistan’s only fellowship in
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the programme’s first graduate, Dr Sana Younus, won the IACAPAP's prestigious Donald Cohen Fellowship Award. The award selects 20 young minds from around the world who have displayed leadership skills and a passion for promoting mental health. Dr Younus was one of the winning fellows selected from over 180 competitive applications from across the globe and will now be mentored by well-known experts in the field.
“I’m honoured to receive this prestigious award and excited to work with people I’ve looked up to throughout my academic career,” Dr Younus said. “I’ll use this opportunity to develop advocacy programmes that meet the mental health needs of young people.”
Another young psychiatrist at AKU, Dr Aisha Sanober, a former classmate of Dr Younus and a current fellow in the CAP programme, secured the Adopt A Delegate Scholarship at the IACAPAP. Dr Sanober presented her research on bullying at this year’s IACAPAP Congress and also led a workshop that demonstrated how to incorporate cultural humility in medical training.
“I got a chance to co-lead this workshop with the current president of IACAPAP, Dr Bruno Fallisard. For someone attending an international conference for the very first time, this was an opportunity of a lifetime. I will now be working on developing a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) with Dr Fallisard in the area of culturally aware practices.”
Both Dr Sanober and Dr Younus have been mentored by Dr Ayesha Mian, chair of AKU's department of psychiatry, and founding director of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship.
During this time, Dr Ayesha has also mentored third-year MBBS student and aspiring psychiatrist, Haider Ali Saleem, who also received plaudits at IACAPAP. Haider was one of five winners of the Best Poster Award for his research that compared the stress faced by parents of children who are undergoing cancer treatment with that of parents whose children have a psychiatric disorder.
“There were over 650 posters presented at the conference and it was such a thrill to be selected as one of the top five,” Haider noted. “I’d like to thank Dr Ayesha Mian for giving me the chance to be a part of this research project two years ago and for believing in me.”
Commenting on the significance of these awards, Dr Ayesha said: “Conservative figures show that around 10 to 20 million children in Pakistan suffer from a range of psychiatric symptoms. We are just beginning to train our doctors in this field. With only 4-5 trained child and adolescent psychiatrists in the country, there is still a lot of work to do."
“These awards attest to the fact that the future wellbeing of our children is in good hands. These brilliant young minds put Pakistan on the map at this conference and they make me so proud.”