Child Psychiatry in Bosnia and Herzegovina: History of Development - Review

The paper gives an overview of the spatial conditions, human resources and development course of child and adolescent psychiatry as an independent profession. The beginnings of the development date back to 1959, when the Department of children and youth is opened in Sarajevo at the Neuropsychiatric Clinic, which continues without interruption even today. After that was opened same department in Banja Luka and after a certain period of outpatient work, and stationary departments in Tuzla and Mostar. Over time, as the world's developed and improved understanding of the needs of treatment of mental disorders, and as the trends of professional approaches changed from time to time, the same set of guidelines were followed by the professional work of staff members in the departments. As the material opportunities allowed, in all localities there is a clear tendency to improve spatial conditions. However, personnel capability has improved at a slightly faster pace, so by the war time in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BH) between 1992 and 1995, in BH were mostly trained professional teams. In meanwhile, the need for psychiatric assistance has largely exceeded the human resource capabilities. The situation of war has changed dramatically in the present situation, departments are empty, and there is a paradoxical situation that the patient in the hospitals does not exist, but the reason is bizarre, since because of the war, physically, patients are not able to access to hospitals. This situation also contributes to the departure a large number of staff, which is in the child psychiatry, and so was insufficient. Despite this, during the war in Sarajevo, the Psychiatric Clinic conducts research on psychiatric morbidity and evaluation of population trauma due to war stress in the city of Sarajevo, and included the population of children and adolescents who remained in the city. The project is implemented only in the city area, because Sarajevo was city, three and half years under the total military siege. Further on, the paper elaborates the status of spatial and human resources capacity in the post-war period up to the present day. There is an evident expansion of the psychological assistance service throughout the territory of BH, which has been largely on the initiative and all the necessary assistance of the international community through non-governmental organizations, but with the involvement of the remaining domestic staffs. They were also stated the government projects, in the last two decades, on the professional training of staff working in Mental Health Centers across the country. In the latest age of the last ten years, a number of private psychological counselling centers have been opened that, beside the psychiatrists, are led by certified psychotherapists, psychologists, pedagogues, and teachers. This fact is very important for the future, because this is a good part solving the current lack of professionalism to provide psychological assistance to the population in developmental age. All professionals involved in the human psyche were aware of how important the timely recognition and provided expert assistance, when it comes to developmental age. In the post-war period, certain scientific researches on the psychological trauma severity of the population are being carried out, and the results of some of these researches are mentioned in this paper. The paper concludes with the statement that the current state of development of child psychiatry in the country is satisfactory in relation to the conditions that we had the past decade, but with the suggestion that a long way to furthering this profession and its affirmation at the global level is in the future.