Center for Intercultural Psychiatry & Psychotherapy (ZIPP)

• Transcultural, multidisciplinary as well as immigration- and refugee-sensible psychiatric, psychological-psychotherapeutic and social work diagnostics, counseling, crisis intervention and treatment
• In particular, low-frequency psychoanalytically-oriented individual and group therapy
• Mother-tongue treatment
• Treatment with language and cultural mediators
• Treatment of patients with complex disorders combined with complex psychosocial problems
• Writing psychiatric-psychotherapeutic statements after a continuous treatment of at least six months
• Further placement in outpatient, semi-stationary and inpatient services of psychiatric-psychotherapeutic standard care, as well as general and immigration- or refugee-specific services of psychosocial care, in cooperation with TransVer
• Networking with the Berlin Psychiatric Outpatient Clinics, licensed psychotherapists and psychiatrists of different mother-tongues, and counseling centers for immigrants from Berlin and the entire federal territory
• Advanced- and further-training, as part of the Berlin Seminar for Intercultural Psychotherapy and Supervision (BSIPS) and TransVer among others
• Advanced- and further-training in the form of national and international conferences, lectures, seminars and workshops, e.g.: Conference "Meeting Beyond the Couch - Escape to the Couch?!"; "Network Now - Psychosocial Care for Refugees" (network exchange)
• Development and implementation of supervision and peer-consulting formats

We strive for a holistic view of our patients. We understand the individual problem invariably against the background of individual structural vulnerabilities, as well as intra-psychic, inter-personal, intra-group and inter-group conflicts. In doing so, we always take into consideration immigration- and refugee-specific dynamics, as well as the influence of sociocultural, ethnic, religious and gender-specific factors for our case understanding and treatment planning. The handling of hybridity and ambiguity is a core competence of our care team.
The interlocking of psychiatric and psychotherapeutic treatment represents a special value of our clinical care. Since the foundation of ZIPP we offer individual therapy as well as need-oriented groups. We believe that the group analytic approach allows similarity and differences to be productively accessible on the one hand, and on the other, to make power asymmetries negotiable.

Currently running groups:

• Movement group for refugee women with depressive and psychosomatic complaints
• Psychodynamic group for young Afghan men

Past groups included:

• Discussion groups for Arabic speaking refugee men or women
• Group therapy for Turkish women
• Group therapy for women from English and French speaking African countries
• Transcultural therapist group for families with migration background

To ensure the multi-perspectivity and differentiation at the above-mentioned levels, we conduct weekly case briefings in which the team members are invited to contribute their understanding from their professional and personal references. In addition, the team's holding function strengthens the emotional processing capacity, of the individual as well as the group as a whole, in the face of our heavy-burdened and traumatized clientele.
In order to improve our self-reflection processes and deepen our understanding of the encounters with our clientele, we receive external supervision.
We regularly present our clinical experience and concepts in scientific publications and conference papers as well as in the aforementioned advanced- and further-training formats for interested colleagues. The integration of the Research Group Transcultural Psychiatry and the close cooperation with the Berlin Institute for Integration and Migration Research (BIM) anchors the transfer of research into practice and vice versa into the structure of the ZIPP. Our treatment services are naturally evaluated on a regular basis.