Publications

Dr. Masoud Ghafoer, PsyD, Marriage and Family Therapy Associate (supervised by Isabel K’Burg, LMFT), is an Afghan-American psychotherapist who graduated in 2018 and has obtained his doctorate degree in counseling psychology in the field of Marriage and Family therapy in the state of California. Throughout his career, Dr. Ghafoer has worked with a diverse client population in a variety of different settings, such as substance abused treatment, individual psychotherapy, couples and family therapy.

In his doctoral dissertation, Dr. Ghafoer has researched and investigated factors that seemed to be impacting Afghan parents’ parenting practices. More specifically, the impact of Afghan parents’ past trauma experiences on their current parenting styles were investigated.

Beside working as a psychotherapist and providing mental health treatment, Dr. Ghafoer has worked as an associated professor at the California School for Professional Psychology at Alliant International University in Sacramento, California for one year.

In 2017, Dr. Ghafoer was one of the poster presenters at the 7th annual conference of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) California Division In San Diego. His poster presentation outlined the effectiveness of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) when working with a culturally diverse population.

Because of his multilingual ability (Farsi/Dari, Pashto,Dutch, English) Dr. Ghafoer has been able to extend his expertise and professional experience to those who are greatly in need of mental health treatment, socially isolated and underserved groups in the community.

Since September 2018, Dr. Ghafoer has been providing mental health services as a prevention counselor to the Afghan community in the Fremont area through Afghan Coalition. In addition, Dr. Ghafoer also works as the program coordinator at Afghan Coalition to ensure quality and effective communication between different services providers in the agency.

Many Afghan immigrants living in the U.S. have experienced trauma and violence in their home country, along with other traumatizing encounters such as immigration, resettling, loss of identity as immigrants, etc.

There is an undeniable lack of mental health services, specifically services that are culturally appropriate, in the Afghan community that needs to be fulfilled.

7While working with the Afghan community, Dr. Ghafoer’s mission is to make mental health services available and accessible to all Afghans and those who are in need of mental health prevention counseling services by addressing and discussing common mental health issues among Afghans and how/when to seek professional assistance.

Dr. Ghafoer’s vision is to help create a strong, stable, and healthy Afghan community in which people’s mental health needs are attended to in a very effective, non-shaming and healthy manner.