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.

About the Conference – The Second International Conference On Mental Health and Media

Prof.Mona Rakhawy

Welcome Note

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

CONFERENCE THEMES

CONFERENCE LEADERSHIP & COMMITTEES

Honorary President

Dr. Walid Sarhan

Walid Sarhan MD FRCPsych. IDFAPA

Renowned psychiatrist honored for his longstanding clinical contribution.

Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, International Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and Honorary Member of the World Psychiatric Association.

Honorary President

Prof. Charles Baddoura

Professor of Psychiatry at Saint Joseph University, President of the Lebanese Association of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and former President of the Lebanese Psychiatric Society and the Arab Federation of Psychiatrists. French Board–certified and Honorary Member of the World Psychiatric Association.