Mental Health
A Mushroom for War’s Misery
As the war in Ukraine nears its fifth year, the country is in the midst of a mental health crisis. Lacking other options, some are finding relief in the amanita mushroom, which many see as a culturally appropriate way to combat wartime trauma.
Fanon and the Asylum
The project to reform an asylum in the French Pyrenees — and the quirky Catalonian doctor behind this movement — served as the inspiration for one of the world’s most renowned postcolonial thinkers, Frantz Fanon. Its lessons are still relevant today.
Sanitizing the Psychedelic Revolution
A proposed corporate approach to psychedelics, which promotes a “risk-free” quick fix in a pill, leaves deeper questions unanswered. Will this new approach, unfolding in a very different context from that in which the psychedelics evolved, potentially cause more harm than good?
Gaza’s Children Face an Unseen Crisis
The mental health crisis among Gaza’s children was already acute before Oct. 7, with UNICEF estimating that at least 500,000 children needed psychosocial help. Now, after nine months of war, the scale of the trauma is unfathomable.
In Treatment: Therapy in the Middle East Needs a Non-Western Approach
The convention under Western psychology is to treat a client as solely responsible for their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. By contrast, in collectivist societies the “Self” is usually treated in relationship to family members and the community.