Pain, loss, fear, panic, anger: Gaza’s Palestinians are suffering psychological torment
A Palestinian child is comforted following Israeli bombardment of a Gaza City neighbourhood, at al-Ahli Arab hospital, 4 July 2024
Victoria Brittain reports in Middle East Eye on 17 July 2024:
How are the people of the Gaza Strip, who have been displaced innumerable times and suffered staggering losses, coping with nine months of Israel’s military assault on every aspect of life?
The first detailed report of the mental health impact of the war has just been released by the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP).
Nine Months of Israel’s War on Gaza: the Mental Health Impacts and the GCMHP’s Response represents another challenge to the international community to end the inhumanity of this devastating military aggression that threatens the wellbeing of future Palestinian generations.
The report is researched and written by GCMHP staff who have since October 2023 seen two of their three centres destroyed, the third damaged, and three of their colleagues, all female psychologists, killed. It details current work and future initiatives to mitigate the mental suffering of Gaza’s 2.2 million people and blunt the traumatic impact on future generations of their wounded society.
In its pages, survivors of the genocide speak from tents, ruined homes and temporary shelters to mental health professionals, themselves displaced and grieving like the patients they are treating. Photographs show a mental health worker sitting on a chair taking notes while bent intently towards a patient, group meetings of women, group activities for children and pictures children have drawn.
Words of despair, excruciating mental pain, loss, fear, panic, anger, violence, uncontrollable shouting, helplessness, feeling suffocated, thoughts of suicide, or denial are the texture of the research.
The report calls for an immediate and lasting ceasefire (as did the UN secretary-general eight long months ago) and the entry and distribution of adequate supplies of fuel, water and food (as has every UN agency for months). Then, for the first time, it demands making psychological support a top priority and an essential part of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Traumatised
GCMHP is an independent, non-profit organisation and the largest mental health facility in Gaza. t was established in 1990 by Dr Eyad el-Sarraj, as Gaza was traumatised by three years of Israel’s military response to the unarmed uprising of civil society known as the Intifada. Sarraj, who was Gaza’s first psychiatrist, pioneered mental health research as well as treatment. He built a team of mental health workers, including many with experience of Israeli torture, prison and forced collaborations.