Dr. Abdel Aziz Mousa ThabetEmeritus Professor, Al Quds University, Palestine
Biography
Professor Thabet is a Palestinian child and adolescent Psychiatrist, was educated in Palestine, Austria, and United Kingdom in child psychiatry. His main interest was in dealing with Palestinian children affected by First Intifada which was erupted in 1987. He was running the clinical setting in Gaza city and was seeing adults and children victims of trauma and political violence. Cases were varied from depression, psychosomatic problems, anxiety, PTSD in adults. Children were referred due problems such as fears, anxiety, bed wetting, acute stress disorder, PTSD, ADHD, and conversion disorder. In seeing such cases, Prof Thabet decided to study the impact of trauma on children in the Gaza Strip in 1993. On the last three decades professor Thabet had conducted very interesting research including the prevalence of mental health problems in Gaza and West Bank, coping strategies used by children and parents. He targeted different ages and preschool children were in the target group in which he carried out studies of the mental health of children in preschool age and their mothers. He also studied patients in different departments in the hospitals such as End Stage Renal Failure, Cancer patients both in children and adult departments.
After a while he conducted evaluation of intervention studies including different intention programs such as writing therapy, school based intervention, psychoeducation, psychodrama. In the last years, he started to lock for risk and protective factors in children and adults victims of political violence, stress, and trauma. He had conducted studies to see the impact of trauma, stress on resilience and PTG of adolescents and adults. His research includes both qualitative and quantitative ways of data collection. Also, Prof Thabet had targeted marginalized population such as Labor, orphaned, children lost their fathers in war, children with special needs, children under dialysis.
Research Interest
Impact of stress and trauma on children and adults and the coping as medication factor and resilience as the outcome