Functionally Speaking #11 - Interview with Beate Ebert

Beate Ebert is doing a remarkable job helping reduce suffering and improve quality of living for people in Sierra Leone. She’s helping establish mental health infrastructures, training professionals in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and doing important implementations of public health initiatives to reduce the spread of Ebola in West Africa. She and I worked together with Joanne Dahl presenting ACT workshops in Sierra Leone. Beate and I reminisce about that experience and talk about the challenges of disseminating the contextual behavioral sciences. Beate explains how she used ACT to influence people’s actions to reduce the spread of the Ebola virus. (Check out Steve Hayes’s blog about this topic here.) We also discuss our experience in the amputee camps, conversations with adults who were child-combatants, prevention measures, and our interaction with Father Peter Conte, a great community organizer in Freetown. (To read a little bit about Peter, look here). If you’d like to assist in this Beate’s initiatives, check out the Commit + Act organization’s website and Facebook page.