Special Hearings — Mental Health Workshop — UNKNOWN

PARTICIPANT: Well (...intervention) to Dr. Cooper?
DR. COOPER: I think it's very important to have an oath. However we have these codes right now, okay. And I want to underline the report by Wendy. You need to actually have in a sense a mandated, in a mandated fashion ethical practise to become more central than it is in the health professions generally. That this is not good enough just to have as a curriculum point. You need to interact with the trainers because I think that's where our problem lies. You have all these people teaching at the medical schools and medical faculties and psychology schools and OT and wherever else you may need them, social work and so on. But how do they deal with ethics and with codes which actually ought to rise above narrow interests, narrow ideology and those types of things.
 Right now the Hippocratic oath says one should do those things but in the practise it's being violated. And it has been violated and there are notorious examples. And the Medical and Dental Council and MASA have been guilty of actually condoning and perpetuating that system. So how do we address it besides merely saying we need that oath? I think what we need to do is actually have and that enabling institution together with the Human Rights Commission, maybe need to visit the Geneva Code plus the other suggestions made by colleagues during the TRC hearing process. And emerge with a, an code of conduct or an oath that not only health professionals but members of the police, the military and whatever other services and forces are out there, who have been responsible for the gross violations in the first place. Ought to with a slight change be able to adapt for their particular institutions.
 So we shouldn't look at it as merely a health sector thing and narrow it down to that because in some ways the health sector was dragooned into playing these roles and they went willingly. Many of them didn't scream at all about it. So I would like to bring that side of it to play. I think it's important to add besides the untouchable situation in India, something that Lionel raised yesterday during lunch and that's the, like the GI Bill, the Veterans' Bill in the Us. It's affirmative towards those people who have paid a price for their country. Very different in terms of the GI's and the American Vets but in a sense they are veterans. They ought to be in our national hall of fame but we only will get the Mandelas and the Mbekis and the Sisulus. We need those names as well added to it. Right, so I would say that we need to use that authority as well. And there are a few other examples I would imagine in South America, not very good ones. But wherever we can do it and your research people should be able to do that. So it's not, doesn't only look at a, another developing Third World non-European grouping, it also includes them, who inform our ethos. 
 The issue of the training we ought to comment about the intercultural nature of our society and that, that needs to be confronted right up front. It shouldn't be a thing where some lecturer at Wits or RAU just glibly stands up and say: "Take note that we're living in a multi-cultural society." We ought to have something that actually takes people through those things and so that our citizens can understand each other better. And there too I would urge interaction with the Human Rights Commission, but maybe the Gender Commission and the Education Department about looking at the issue of race and inter-cultural or ethic language issues in our society.
 With regard to opportunities to training and preference in the trade and industry sector we should also add jobs. Preference for jobs within the public sector. If we do it as an example in the public sector then commerce and industry, the private sector will say: "Well they've had so and so and so and so and they've done well by appointing those people, maybe we should look at some of those people." And I think we should not just look at they must be given opportunities in education but they should be given preference in state sector jobs that may become open.

PARTICIPANT: Okay we have one more hand but okay.

PARTICIPANT: As usual I agree with what Saths has said. I'd like to support that and what Wendy was saying. I think from something like thirty years experience in trying to change health sciences education we all agree it's necessary. We are now asking to do what we tried to do thirty years ago. It's difficult. One of the things we need is both a specific place. There has to be somewhere that it is mandated that these human rights issues are included because otherwise one of the general principles that works is; whatever everyone believes, other people (...indistinct) we teach throughout our curriculum actually gets taught nowhere in the curriculum. There has to a place otherwise very often everybody feels free to neglect it. "I didn't include it in my teaching today, I'm sure next week's lecturer will include it somewhere." Everybody feels free to leave it out. But the next and most critical problem is how you include that in the day to day teaching, in the day to day clinical work that everyone is exposed to. And the problem there and what makes that most important is how to translate the lofty principles of the statements of philosophers into reality. It's one thing to have a Solly Benatar give a lecture about the importance of the principle of benevolence. I don't any of us support a principle of malevolence. Though some of our colleagues have acted as if that was their guiding light. But the problem in most instances is how with this person in this dilemma, how can I be most benevolent? How do you apply those principles in particular examples? That a lecturer will not do very effectively in their lectures. That's where both the examples, some of the examples from the victims and some of the perpetrators that are being brought to the commission's notice, can be used in teaching. Because the question is; how did those situations happen and how could they be prevented? And that should be part of the problem the TRC won't finish solving but part of that duty must be passed on. Not only to the teachers, and they need retraining because you can't expect the teachers who spent thirty five years not teaching about this ethical dilemma to suddenly start doing so. Unless something changes in their way of doing it, in their motivation to doing it. And let that problem also pass onto our students to face the challenge of how to find solutions to that.

PARTICIPANT: Okay thank you very much. I'll ask this group to move onto the next point.
DR. ORR: Well I think that there's overlap in group 2 (...indistinct)

PARTICIPANT: Oh, okay. Okay Tulani?

MR GREY: (...indistinct) this section. We spent as I said a lot of time on the issue of knowledge acquisition and developing a - how can I say? A culture of looking back for people's mental health. Not necessarily just a generally. And also we spoke about the fact that it does, it does get incorporated in our symbolic reparation measures. But I don't, in terms of mental health I didn't really, there is a link in terms of looking back and collecting stories and story tellers, telling does improve our well-being and sort of ability to integrate the past. But I think maybe, do you want to say some more on that? I don't know whether I articulated it that well. The national treasure of looking back and the monument.

PARTICIPANT: (

INAUDIBLE: )

MR GREY: My point is I want to come up with the specific recommendation around this story telling.