Mental Health and Trauma

A black and white drawing of the entrance to a building with the sign “Community Mental Health Center” in both Arabic and English.

Class A: Politicizing Trauma

Readings

Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman (2009) “Chapter 7: Humanitarian Psychiatry” (163-183) and “Chapter 8: Palestine” (189-216) in The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood. Princeton University Press, Princeton: New Jersey.

Yoke Rabaia, Mahasin F. Saleh, Rita Giacaman (2014) “Sick or Sad? Supporting Palestinian Children Living in Conditions of Chronic Political Violence,” Children & Society 28(3)

Multimedia and News Articles

interviews

Interview with Dr. Yasser Abu Jamei: The Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, Brittany Dawson and Zeina Azzam (2016)

statements

The Abolition and Disability Studies Collective. “Statement of Solidarity with Palestine” (on the effects of trauma) (2021).

Discussion Questions

  • What is the relationship between war, occupation, and trauma? Is medicalized trauma an appropriate or useful frame for narrating settler colonial occupation?
  • How do medical and psychological explanations of trauma shape how we understand the nature of violence?
  • What do these authors argue about the role of medical humanitarianism in Palestine?
  • What role do psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers play in shaping the lives of Palestinian people?

Further Reading

Nadia Abu El-Haj (2022) Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in post-9/11 America. New York: Verso.

Rita Giacaman (2018) “Reframing Public Health in Wartime: From the Biomedical Model to the “Wounds Inside,” Journal of Palestine Studies 47(2).

Class B: Mental Health & Occupation

Readings

Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian (2005) “Voice Therapy for Women Aligned with Political Prisoners: A Case Study of Trauma among Palestinian Women in the Second Intifada,” Social Service Review, 79(2): 322–343.

Lara Sheehi and Steven Sheehi (2022) “The Will to Live in Palestine” (74-113) in Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine. Routledge: New York.

Multimedia

illustrated story book

Get to know us! Our Lives with mental illness in the Palestinian community, Groups of Friends with Mental Illness, Hanna Kienzler, Yoke Rabaia, Suzan Mitwalli, Palestinian Counseling Center (2022).

Discussion Questions

  • What is the relationship between colonialism and “mental health?”
  • How do the material conditions of occupation shape access to and the provision of mental health care?
  • How are experiences of mental illness and trauma articulated as gendered and sexualized?
  • What, for these authors, is the relationship between the provision of mental health care and liberation? 

Further Reading

Randa May Wahbe (2012) “Physical and Mental Health of Long-Term Palestinian Political Prisoners,” The Lancet.

Nelson Maldonado-Torres (2017) “Franz Fanon and the decolonial turn in psychology: from modern/colonial methods to the decolonial attitude,” The South African Journal of Psychology 47(4).

Stephen Sheehi (2018) “The Transnational Palestinian Self: Toward Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Thought,” Psychoanalytic Perspective 15(3): 307-322.

Umut Yıldırım (2021) “Spaced-Out States: Decolonizing Trauma in a War-Torn Middle Eastern City.” Current Anthropology 62(6): 717-740

podcast

Millennials Are Killing Capitalism, “Against Alienation: Lara and Stephen Sheehi on their book, Psychoanalysis Under Occupation” (start at minute 22, 1 hour 40 minutes)