Professor Margot Prior
Departments of Psychology
University of Melbourne and the Royal Children's Hospital

In October 2001, I spent three weeks in Hanoi, on a Fellowship jointly funded by the Academies of the Humanities and the Social Sciences in Australia, and the Centre for the Social Sciences and Humanities in Vietnam.

Most of my time was spent at the Institute of Psychology in Hanoi. This Institute, under the leadership of Professor Do Luong, supports approximately 24 social scientists, most of whom are psychologists. Many have received their basic degrees in Russia, some in Vietnam in more recent years, and some have postgraduate training from other countries especially from France. A number are currently enrolled in PhD programs. The majority have special interests in social, personality, developmental and clinical psychology. At the Institute I gave six talks on various aspects of my own research programs, on research methods, and on clinical psychology. A number of psychologists and social science students from other institutions were invited to attend these talks, as well as Institute of Psychology staff.

In addition to my lecture program, I worked with individuals and small groups to whom I provided clinical supervision and research consultation. The Institute has a fledgling Clinical Psychology Service and I saw a number of clients with the clinician, and was able to provide advice on assessment methods, diagnosis, and treatment, and general clinical supervision. Psychologists in these roles in Hanoi are largely untrained or minimally trained, and the need for supervision and for professional training programs is extreme. The demand for clinical psychology services in Vietnam is very high, with virtually no services available for the population unless they suffer from a florid psychiatric condition. Hence there is enormous pressure to respond to need in the community, even in the absence of adequate professional training for psychologists.

The courage, enthusiasm, dedication, and keen desire for learning in these predominantly young research psychologists in the Institute of Psychology was truly remarkable. The conditions in which they work can only be described as Spartan; they lack access to books, journals and up to date research information, which we take for granted. However they are keenly aware of the enormous social, cultural and political changes occurring in their country and the growing political support for research and practice in psychology. A number of researchers are working on government or foreign aid-sponsored research projects. My work with the Institute was greatly facilitated by the assistance of Mr Le Van Hao who was a superb translator, who took care of my work schedule, and my every need, and who taught me a great deal about the socio-cultural and academic climate in Vietnam. Although I had accepted an invitation to speak at the National Conference of the Vietnam Psychologist's Association, it was re-scheduled at the last minute to a date just after my departure. On request, I prepared an address on "Psychology in Australia: Connections to Vietnam". This was translated and presented to the conference on my behalf by Mr Hao. He reports that it was received with great interest and with numerous requests for copies of the paper. The Psychology Association as well as the Institute is very keen to build links to Psychology in Australia.

I also visited the National University in Hanoi and had a meeting with Director, Professor Khanh, Vice Director, Dr Nguyen Hoi Loan, and Dr Cong Khanh. The latter was a key liaison agent, translator, and facilitator during my visit to Hanoi in many ways. He is a staff member (trained in Clinical Psychology at Murdoch, WA) charged with the task of setting in place a graduate professional training program in the Department of Psychology, in Clinical Psychology. As part of my Fellowship plan, I was able to assist him in many ways with this development, and we will continue to collaborate. The University in Hanoi wishes to set up a partnership with the School of Psychology at University of Melbourne and I will be working on this initiative with departmental and university colleagues. There are existing links with the Hanoi National University and the Education Faculty at Melbourne University with Professor Patrick Griffin and colleagues.

During the final week of my visit, I spent several days at the National Institute of Paediatrics, (NIP), working in the Mental Health unit. Here I presented a paper to hospital staff, and had two meetings with groups of families with autistic children. There are minimal services and special education opportunities for autistic children in Vietnam and the families are in a desperate plight. Their situation is parallel to that obtaining in the 1960s in Australia, when autism was first recognised and the first services were developed. I was able to offer diagnostic consultation to the families visiting NIP, and advice about therapy and education for autistic children. However, perhaps the most significant contribution was that I was able to facilitate the formation of an Autistic Childrens' Parents Association to lobby for services for their children. I identified a number of potential supporters and funding agencies such as World Vision and Save the Children.- Sweden, who might assist the Parents Association in setting up some special facilities for these children. I also contacted Dr Barry Wright who is directing a training program for Special Education teachers in Hanoi, and whose work could be helpful in the development of links with special education resources. Parents were provided with all these contact details.

My other work at NIP consisted in seeing patients with very complex and challenging mental health conditions and in providing training and supervision to the two psychologists working in the Unit, as well as consulting with the Psychiatrist/Director.

For all of the agencies with whom I worked I collected a list of much needed resources including books, journal articles, tests, and research instruments. I am in the process of mailing materials to Hanoi to fulfil those requests.

In addition to the above, I visited UNESCO on two occasions for meetings with Yung Le, a Vietnamese Australian who is in Hanoi for 12 months as a young Australian Ambassador. We were able to exchange mutually useful information, discuss research projects etc., and this exchange proved a helpful conduit to identifying agencies who might be helpful for autistic children and their families, such as the Women's Union Committee for the Care and Protection of Children.

The international relations section of the Centre assisted my visit in Hanoi, in particular Dr Lan Anh and Ms Binh,to whom I am grateful.

I found this visit a successful and rewarding one and all feedback suggested that my input was much valued by the people I worked with. I believe I was able to transfer relevant and helpful aspects of my research, teaching and clinical experience to groups of people who were extremely appreciative of supervision, mentoring, and the sharing of research ideas.

Recommendations:

Some of my specific recommendations relating to my recent visit have been mentioned above, many of them driven by requests from the Institute and University members.

They include:
Facilitating visits from colleagues to meet particular identified needs, including Professor Leon Mann, and Dr Lyn Littlefield. Professor Mann would be able to offer multiple benefits to colleagues in Hanoi: as President of the Academy he can foster further productive links with the Vietnamese Centres; as a past president of the Australian Psychological Society, he can assist in the development of the Vietnamese Psychologists Association who are extremely keen to link with us in Australia; as an eminent psychologist with expertise in social, organisational, and industrial psychology he would be greatly welcomed by both the Institute and the University. These and other organisations are very much aware of the importance of developing research, teaching and professional links with industry in Vietnam.
Dr Littlefield is an experienced clinical psychologist with specific expertise in the teaching and practice of Cognitive Behavioural Psychology, as well as being Executive Officer of the APS. There is urgent need for up to date education in therapeutic practice at all three agencies mentioned above; they are keen to combine in a training program which we hope would involve Dr Littlefield. She too could foster APS links to the Vietnam Psychology Association.

More general suggestion relating to the Exchange fellowship opportunities.

My experience in Vietnam indicated that Fellowships for the younger generation of Vietnamese social scientists would be the best use of our limited resources. I can identify several people I met who would be ideal candidates for such an experience. It is particularly important that they are fluent in English of course, as it is much harder for us to provide translators in this country. It is the younger generation who will be making a significant contribution to development in Vietnam in social science domains, and who will derive the most benefit from exposure to new developments in the Social Sciences. We can provide further education opportunities here, as well as setting up research and professional partnerships, which would have an excellent future. I am aware of sensitivities relating to cultural and seniority issues in international visits, but I believe that shaping the nature of the fellowship program to incorporate some kind of age criterion would be helpful. I discussed this issue with Dr Lan Ahn who is the Vice-Director of the International Relations Department of the Centre. She saw no problem with the award of fellowships to younger researchers as long as their Institutes approved them. Hence the challenge would be to argue convincingly that long-term interests of Vietnam would be well served by offering opportunities to younger scholars. This might be an issue that Professor Mann could discuss if he were able to visit Hanoi. Any fellowship should have a specified and active program involving collaborative relationships and reciprocity with identified scholars Combined programs, involving several Centres, like the one I was able to offer may represent opportunities for value adding in the short and long term. Cooperation between bodies of scholars in Vietnam needs some fostering, and joint seminars, training programs, and consultation worked very well during my time at the Institute. If we were able to provide further resources, then development of joint and shared programs would be very important in this impoverished research setting.

Members of the Academies in Australia could be encouraged to send books, journal collections, and research tools to Vietnam as well as to make themselves available on the Internet for research consultations.

I wish to express my thanks to the Academies in both Australia and Vietnam for the opportunity to make a very interesting, rewarding, and mutually valuable visit.