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GXC 2025 Online Virtual Conference - Mental Health Without Borders

Building Community-Based Mental Health Services After War: Lessons from the Kosovo Reform (1999–2004)

Ferid Agani, MD, PhD 🇽🇰
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Learning Objectives

Participants will be able to:

  • Describe the key components and theoretical underpinnings of Kosovo’s 1999–2004 community-based mental-health reform.

  • Identify strategies for building collaborative leadership between local stakeholders and international partners in post-conflict settings

  • Analyze quantitative and qualitative outcomes-including reductions in hospitalizations and stigma-that demonstrate the reform’s effectiveness.

  • Evaluate how lessons from Kosovo’s experience can inform mental-health policy and service design in other low-resource or post-disaster environments.

Educational Goal

This session will enhance participants’ professional capacity to design and implement sustainable, community-based mental-health services in post-conflict or low-resource settings. By examining the Kosovo reform as a case study, clinicians and administrators will strengthen their ability to apply collaborative leadership, ecological systems thinking, and evidence-based strategies to future clinical and policy initiatives.

Description

This session examines the systemic mental-health reform undertaken in Kosovo in the immediate aftermath of the 1998–1999 conflict. Faced with the near-total collapse of the neuropsychiatric system and the urgent mental-health needs of a traumatized population, local professionals-working in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO) and international collaborators-implemented a pioneering, community-based, family-centered mental-health system between 1999 and 2004.


Participants will explore the reform’s theoretical grounding in ecological and community-psychology frameworks and its unique model of collaborative leadership. Key steps included creation of a multidisciplinary Task Force, drafting of a national Strategic Plan, establishment of a dedicated Mental Health Office within the Ministry of Health, and rapid development of seven regional community mental-health centers, seven residential integration homes, and new child and adolescent services.


Drawing on mixed-methods research-statistical analyses, minimally structured interviews, focus groups, and participant observation-this session highlights both “revolutionary” rapid changes (e.g., decentralization, human-resource expansion) and “evolutionary” shifts (e.g., attitudes toward nurses, interprofessional collaboration, reduction of stigma). Attendees will analyze how local leadership, international partnerships, and a “punctual disequilibrium” created by war enabled sustainable structural and cultural change despite limited resources and significant impediments.


By understanding this case study, mental-health professionals can glean practical lessons for post-conflict and low-resource settings worldwide: how to balance international support with local agency, how to institutionalize reforms for long-term sustainability, and how to strengthen professional morale and community acceptance of mental-health services.

Target Audience

  • Addiction Professional
  • Counselor
  • Marriage & Family Therapist
  • Nurse
  • Physician
  • Psychologist
  • Social Worker

Presenters

Ferid Agani, MD, PhD 🇽🇰
Prof. Dr. h.c. Ferid Agani, MD, PhD is a distinguished neuropsychiatrist, academic, and public figure from Kosovo, renowned for his leadership in post-war mental health reform and the integration of spirituality into psychiatry. A graduate of the University of Prishtina and specialist in neuropsychiatry from Zagreb, he holds a PhD focused on mental health service transformation in Kosovo. Prof. Agani has served as Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the University of Prishtina and has published extensively on trauma, resilience, and psychiatric genetics in journals such as JAMA and the Journal of Traumatic Stress. His upcoming book, Critical Response to Contemporary Personality Theories Based on Religious Psychology and Spirituality (2025), explores the intersection of faith and mental health. A former Minister of Health and Member of Parliament, he played a pivotal role in rebuilding Kosovo’s health infrastructure and establishing a community-based mental health system. He is the founder of the Justice Party and co-founder of the New National Force (FRK). Internationally recognized, Prof. Agani is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and recipient of multiple honors, including the Max Hayman Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Albanian Psychiatric Association. He currently lectures, publishes, and maintains a private psychiatric practice in Prishtina, with a focus on trauma, spirituality, and community resilience.

Financially Sponsored By

  • GXC Events - The Global Exchange Conference