Meet Dr Diba Pourmand from Transcultural Mental Health

Dr Diba Pourmand, is the Farsi speaking Senior Clinical Consultant at Transcultural Mental Health, who has played an important role during the COVID-19 pandemic, working with people from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) backgrounds who need support with their mental health well-being.

In non-pandemic times, what is your role in NSW Health? What does that involve?

I am a senior clinician working at the Transcultural Mental Health Centre and my key responsibilities include providing specialist clinical intervention, training and clinical supervision in the specific area of transcultural mental health.

What are you doing now as part of the COVID-19 response?

Apart from some logistic limitations in practice, business is as usual. Of course, COVID-19 has had an extra toll on people who already have experienced severe and prolonged trauma. Such experiences made presentations even more complex and reinforced our role in supplementing mental health services with additional specialised input from the Transcultural Mental Health Centre.

Have you been involved in anything like this before?

This is the first and I hope the last epidemic experience I will be exposed to, but at the same time I have had the opportunity to witness other humanitarian adversities as a mass experience with the same feeling of helplessness but needless to say, unity. I am also deeply thoughtful of those who are more affected and less equipped to tackle this in various parts of the world.

What's your biggest learning to date?

As a health practitioner, early on you realise how vulnerable one is and this experience as a global disaster was a clear proof of that.

What's your message to colleagues across the system?

It is now more than a year since this all started and I believe my colleagues are well aware of all the facts and fictions regarding this period in our history. Knowledge and resilience are my message in general. Another key message is appreciating that many of us have families and loved ones impacted by the pandemic both here and in many corners of the world.

What challenges have you faced either at work or at home and how have you overcome them?

The main challenge is the angst of loved ones around the globe and some who live in intensely affected areas. It involves a constant anguish, defencelessness and the uncertainty of life in general.

How do you unwind if you get a spare moment?

Nature, family and best ever friends are the ones that always come to the rescue.

Diba has presented a COVID-19 Mental Health Video in Farsi as part of an initiative by the NSW Multicultural Health Communication Service (MHCS) and NSW Health in partnership with Transcultural Mental Health Centre, in delivering in-language mental health messages to multicultural communities.

View the 'Looking after your mental health during COVID-19' videos in English and other languages including: