Fathi Harb wanted to commit suicide by soldier. So he went to a protest this spring along Gaza’s border, hoping Israeli snipers would shoot him, his grandfather recalls. When they didn’t, Harb, 22, tried again, returning to another protest soon after and again he survived.
Then, last month, he set himself on fire on a busy street in Gaza City, later succumbing to his wounds.
“He called his father right before he did it and told him of his plans,” his grandfather Saeed says.
Gazans have survived years of war. Now depression is killing them
A mental health crisis is gripping the Gaza Strip, experts say, born of repeated wars and the stress of meeting daily needs in this besieged and impoverished Palestinian enclave.
Mental health experts say they have seen a significant increase in symptoms of psychological distress in recent years. In 2017, the number of psychiatric patients visiting government-affiliated mental health clinics rose by 69 percent compared to previous years, according to Gaza’s Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights. The Gaza Community Mental Health Program (GCMHP) says it has tracked an increase over the past year in anxiety, depression and suicide.
And in a recent report, the World Health Organisation said that the constraints imposed on the lives of Palestinians, including in Gaza, have had a “huge effect” on the mental health of the population, amounting to “much more than simple psychological disturbances.”
Nearly two million Palestinians are trapped in the Gaza Strip, hemmed in by restrictions on travel and commerce imposed by Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority to pressure the militant Hamas group, which rules the territory.
The closure has crippled Gaza’s economy and sent unemployment soaring. Gaza’s residents get only a few hours of electricity each day, and most drinking water is contaminated. The spectre of a new conflict with Israel hangs over the territory.
Harb had been chronically jobless. He shared a single apartment with 12 family members, including his pregnant wife. It was too hard, he told his father, explaining his wish to die.
“He said, ‘It will be better than this terrible life we are living,’” Saeed recalls.
In Gaza, “we are talking about a situation where the majority of people have feelings of hopelessness, helplessness and powerlessness,” says Hasan Ziyada, director of the GCMHP. “They feel trapped. They feel paralysed and like they cannot do anything to change their reality.” The result, he says, is high levels of stress and psychological trauma.
Gaza has long been synonymous with violence and insecurity. But the worst period of conflict has been the past decade, when more than 4,000 Palestinians were killed in three wars between Hamas and Israel, according to the Israeli human rights organisation, B’Tselem.
In the immediate aftermath of the 2014 war, WHO estimated up to 20 percent of the population may have developed mental health conditions. According to Unicef, more than 300,000 children in Gaza required some sort of psychosocial care.
By the time Israeli forces killed 14-year-old Mohammad Ayyoub at a protest in Gaza this April, the sprightly but troubled youth had lived through three wars. They had left him deeply traumatised. He was treated for anxiety and a violent temper, his parents say.