Training arab practitioners in culturally sensitive mental health community interventions

The present paper describes an innovative initiative aimed to facilitate Arab MA students to develop integrated cultural competencies and act to promote mental health within the Israeli Arab community. In order to achieve this goal the initiative took the form of an Arabic language seminar that strove to bind the students’ familiarity with Arab culture with reading materials and research literature on mental health issues and practices from the Arab world. We describe the need,development,processes and the outcome projects of the seminar. The academic setting is described as a nourishing and facilitating environment for training and preparing future community leaders who will bring about social change in mental health issues.