Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology

Dr. Aftab Khan is a graduate of Khyber Medical College, Peshawar, Pakistan. He has received training in Adult Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA; followed by a fellowship (sub-specialization) in Psychotherapy at Harvard University, Cambridge USA. He is a licensed physician in the State of Massachusetts.

In 1997, he established the Islamabad Psychiatry Clinic where he currently works as a consultant. He is a consultant psychiatrist for the British, U.S. and Canadian Embassies in Islamabad and also appears on Pakistan Television and Radio Pakistan, primarily answering questions on mental health issues.

Dr. Aftab regularly holds seminars for raising awareness about different mental health issues, and conducts workshops on stress management, post traumatic stress disorder and cross cultural issues for foreign missions in Islamabad. He has also developed a training workshop in collaboration with Dr. Fuad Khan, on psychodynamic psychotherapy for psychologists and psychiatrists in clinical practice. He regularly gives lectures on anxiety and depressive disorders to non-psychiatrist physicians in general practice, and is a guest speaker at the National Institute of Psychology, Islamabad.

He is one of the founding board members of Rozan, an NGO based in Islamabad. Rozan works on emotional health issues, focusing on women and children, where Dr. Aftab contributes as a clinical supervisor for psychologists practicing psychotherapy. To learn more about Rozan, visit www.rozan.org. He is also on the Board of Directors of Sahil, an Islamabad based NGO working on awareness raising and prevention of child sexual abuse. To learn more about Sahil, visit www.sahil.org.

Having worked in different cultures and social milieus, he has vast experience in the field of mental health. After graduating from Khyber Medical College in 1988, he trained in Psychiatry at the Hayat Shaheed Teaching Hospital, treating patients with serious mental illnesses from poor socioeconomic backgrounds, including Afghan refugees. At the other end of spectrum, he has also worked with students and staff of Harvard University focusing on psychotherapy as the mode of treatment.

He has also worked at the Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi and with U.S. Veterans at Veteran Administrations Hospital in Syracuse, New York. He has been chief resident at the Commonwealth Research Center, established at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, Boston, where research was conducted on new medicines for psychiatric use. Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Beth Israel Hospital are other internationally renowned teaching hospitals of Harvard Medical School where he received part of his training.

According to Dr. Aftab Khan, the significance of treating mental illnesses cannot be over emphasized, but he believes that prevention and promotion of mental health is even more important. His awareness raising work and stress management workshops are all efforts to reach out to many people to promote emotional health.