Dr Razia Akhtar on developing services to become more culturally sensitive.
Episode Overview
In this episode, we are joined by Dr Razia Akhtar who talks about her work as psychologist in community mental health team, doing outreach work to the BAME community. Razia talks about the adaptations she makes to therapy, whilst maintaining an individualized approach. Razia discusses her experience of sharing her cultural background with service users from ethnic minority communities.
About Dr Razia Akhtar
Current Role: Clinical Psychologist & Service Manager
Episode Title: Community Outreach & Adaptations to Therapy
Episode #: Series 1: Episode 1
Link to Episode: https://anchor.fm/afsana9/episodes/Season-1-Episode-1--Community-Outreach--Adaptation-to-Therapy-e122h1f/a-a5g0os
Dr Razia Akhtar is a clinical psychologist in an early intervention service aimed at young people at risk of developing psychosis. Razia leads in developing the service to become more accessible to people from a BAME background who typically do not access services early enough. Razia has always been passionate about this work as I have a keen interest in the mental health of BAME communities, and developing services to become more culturally sensitive.
“It’s really exciting work. It’s not easy because it’s quite a big task and there’s lots of work to be done. I mean in Bradford alone, we have lots of different communities and each community has their own individual needs and barriers and actually, just having the resources to even consider that or approach those communities can be difficult.”