Why focus on the “here and now”?

The here and now is the foundation of Yehia Rakhaw School. It is where emotions emerge, relationships unfold, conflicts surface, creativity appears, and meaning is co-created. It is both a clinical stance and a human position, one that connects inner experience with social and cultural realities.

What do you mean by “legacy”?

Legacy is not something frozen in the past. It is what we carry forward: schools of thought, mentors’ voices, cultural memory, collective trauma, and shared hope. This conference explores how legacies can be honored without becoming rigid, and how they can stay alive through dialogue, creativity, and responsibility.

How does media fit into a conference on mental health, group therapy and group work?

Media shapes how stories are told, silenced, distorted, or amplified.Cinema, storytelling, and digital media influence identity, belonging and collective imagination, and trauma. The conference creates a space to work on the area where media intersects with mental health, group processes, and social responsibility.

Is this a clinical conference, an academic one, or a cultural event?

It is intentionally all three, and also something in between.Alongside theoretical reflections and clinical practice, the conference welcomes experiential learning, artistic expression, and cultural dialogue. Knowledge here is not only presented; it is lived and shared.

The Second International Conference On Mental Health and Media

The Legacy and Power of The Here and Now

Between The Screen & The Circle Human Experience Takes Shape

Slider-pic_0006_A beautiful Circle from Up

Slider-pic_0002_Ahmed Kamal talking with people around. A good one

Slider-pic_0000_Eva and the group from up Media Conference 2023

For Those Who Heal — And Those Who Tell the Story

An international dialogue on legacies, mental health, group work, media, and community, inspired by the Yehia Rakhawy School (ETRe) in dialogue with other schools and traditions.

The here and now is more than a moment in time. It is a shared living space where personal narratives, collective memory, and professional legacies encounter one another and come alive.

Prof.Mona Rakhawy

It is with great pleasure that we welcome you to “The Legacy and Power of the Here and Now”, an international conference held in Egypt, the cradle of civilization where cultures have met, conversed, and shaped human experience for thousands of years.

From this land of multi-layered histories and human encounters, we will explore the power of the here and now — not as a fleeting moment, but as a living space where individual stories, collective experience, and professional identities meet and evolve. We will reflect on individual and group legacies in hospitals and communities through a cultural and artistic lens. We will explore how these legacies are carried, questioned, reshaped, and recreated within professional groups, media, and societies at times of uncertainty, and global challenges.

Special attention will be given to the role of media and cinema as key partners in mental health. We believe that film and storytelling are tools for dialogue, awareness, and social transformation. In this spirit, the conference is held in collaboration with MEDFEST Egypt, whose pioneering work bridges healthcare, cinema, and public engagement promoting a meaningful conversation between healing and storytelling.

This conference is inspired by the legacy of the Yehia Rakhawy School, which placed the here and now at the center of hospital-based therapy and community work. The school pioneered culturally attuned methodologies grounded in Encounter, Togetherness, and Responsibility (ETRe) alongside established traditions in psychology and media.

The conference will be held in Arabic and English affirming a dialogue between languages, voices, and different ways of knowing, training, and growing. We envision this gathering as a hub bringing together Egyptian, African, Arab, and international delegates from mental health, group therapy and group work, media, arts, education, and the wider community, within the homely environment of Rakhawy Institute for Training and Research and Rakhawy Hospital — a space shaped by decades of clinical, educational, and community-based work.

For those who heal and those who tell their stories, this conference is an invitation to meet, to reflect, to create, and to carry forward what truly remains alive in the here and now.

We warmly welcome you to Egypt, and to a shared space for mutual reflection and learning.

Mona Rakhawy
Conference President

Rakhawy School

In the tapestry of contemporary Egyptian thought, Prof. Yehia Rakhawy helped bridge clinical science and the living depth of human existence. He was more than a psychiatrist; he was a poet, a writer, and a philosopher, founding the School of Encounter, Togetherness, and Responsibility (ETRe) to transform the therapeutic encounter in the here and now into a growth-oriented, evolutionary event. At the heart of his legacy is the Biorhythmic Evolutionary Theory in Psychiatry, which rejects the notion of the “static” mind.
To Y.T. Rakhawy, mental struggle was never mere pathology to be silenced, but a “creative protest”، a rhythmic pulsation seeking to break through toward a higher level of integration. He rooted this practice in the specific cultural and linguistic soul of the region, creating an indigenous psychiatry where healing occurs through authentic, shared existence in the vibrating present moment. This conference is a living continuation not only of his work but also of all those whose input has significantly contributed to a better human being. We gather to inhabit the “Here and Now” he so fiercely championed in the region, moving beyond the role of observers to become active participants in the evolutionary process. In the spirit of Prof. Rakhawy and the pioneers who have shaped our time and enriched our understanding, we invite you to join this loop: to be present, to be authentic, and to learn and grow.

“Life is a collection of fleeting seconds, one of which we live together ‘here and now’.”