S. Arshad Husain, M.D., a psychiatrist at the University of Missouri in Columbia and an authority on the psychiatric effects of trauma, is also the founder of the International Center for Psychosocial Trauma at his university. It is a team of 20 American and Canadian professionals who are experts in trauma psychiatry and psychology.

Members of the center made some 20 trips to Bosnia-Herzegovina to help people there after their 1992-95 war. And they are now undertaking similar efforts in Kosovo. For instance, after the war ended in Kosovo in 1999, they started to train Kosovo teachers as therapists, as they had done in Bosnia just a few years earlier. They have established a counseling center in Kosovo and adopted a school in that region where they have made psychiatric and psychological intervention part of the curriculum. Each class—there are 16—receives one hour of mental health training per week. The classes also help teachers identify youngsters who need extra psychiatric or psychological assistance.

Husain and his team have already been in Kosovo twice this year and plan to go two more times. They have a three-year plan to help the Kosovars, he told Psychiatric News.