Saturday 26th October
Dr. Idiris, one of our intern doctor
co-facilitators, begins the re-cap this morning. We are all impressed by how he
manages to control the class and with the confidence he shows when teaching.
Today we have nine community patients joining us and Dr. Jibril visits the
mental ward with the students. The case mix is interesting and varied, with
cases of psychosis, psychosis associated with khat use, depression, learning
disability, epilepsy, possible ADHD or conduct disorder in a child and a child
with epilepsy, whose mother believes she has been possessed from ‘djinn from
the sky.’
The beliefs and stigma associated with
epilepsy are akin to those for schizophrenia or psychosis. There is huge
discrimination against people who suffer with epilepsy and Dr. Jibril’s talk on
organic disorders today illustrates this with cases he has seen. Epilepsy is
not considered a neurological disorder for many here and so comes under the
remit of psychiatry. Dr Jibril describes a case where a young boy with epilepsy
was forced out of school as he kept having seizures and these resulted in
incontinence. His teachers allegedly spoke of him as ‘crazy’ and asked his
parents to remove him from school. We hear of many other fascinating cases from
Dr Jibril. He reminds the students that not all seizures are in fact epilepsy
and uses the example of a case of a young girl who presented with seizures and
was treated with benzodiazepines; however, it turned out that she was in fact
pregnant and had eclampsia. She died as she did not get the treatment she
required due to mis-diagnosis.
It is a real joy to have Dr. Jibril here
with us this year and we are so grateful to him for having organised the whole
set-up of the teaching this year. His teaching is excellent and is a great
person to be able to present real life examples of cases to the students. I
know that I will never forget the examples he has used in his lectures. He
really managed to bring alive the topic in a way that few here could. I am
genuinely impressed by his knowledge, teaching skills and commitment to his
career as a doctor/future psychiatrist.
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