“The future of the Gaza Strip has never been so bleak”

The following is a message from the Gaza Mental Health Foundation, Inc. Please forward it to people you think would be interested in supporting the Gaza Community Mental Heath Program:

The future of the Gaza Strip has never been so bleak.

While the world stands silently by, the million and a half residents of the giant prison that is the Gaza Strip are subjected to a siege depriving them of sufficient fuel, electricity, food, water resources, medicines and other basic necessities, as well as access to adequate medical care, education and a way to make a living. Gazans are enduring the kind of collective punishment that is considered a war crime under international law.

Gazans are not just being traumatized by the Israeli siege and military attacks. Now they also face the agony inflicted by factional infighting under unbearable pressure-cooker conditions.

Dr. Eyad el-Sarraj and his colleagues at the Gaza Community Mental Health Program (GCMHP) have been striving to help the people of Gaza overcome the psychological effects of the violence that surrounds them, and confront the widespread despair and depression in which they live. The GCMHP has initiated an emergency crisis intervention program with the victims of factional fighting, with a special focus on helping women and children.

The GCMHP recognizes that the current state of siege is intensifying the trauma and producing an environment in which extremist ideologies and violence flourish and work for peace is fatally undermined. In a statement issued on the occasion of World Mental Health Day in October 2007, the GCMHP warned that the strangulation of the Gaza Strip was causing a “severe and dangerous deterioration in mental health among the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip” and “will lead to more political and security deterioration in the region and the world.” Under these circumstances, it has played a lead role in launching a humanitarian, non-partisan international campaign to “End the Siege of Gaza.” You can find out more about the campaign by visiting the website of the Gaza Mental Health Foundation, www.gazamentalhealth.org and also download our brochure from that site.

Today, you can help the GCMHP alleviate the psychological suffering of the Palestinian people and break the devastating siege. The Gaza Mental Health Foundation, Inc. was established in 2001 to raise funds in the United States to support the critically important work being carried out by the Gaza Community Mental Health Program. Your donations, which are fully tax-deductible to the extent provided by the IRS Code, are forwarded in their entirety to the GCMHP.

Please write your tax-deductible check payable to the Gaza Mental Health Foundation and send it to:
The Gaza Mental Health Foundation
PO Box 495
Boston, MA 02112.

Thank you so much for not standing silently by while the people of Gaza are deprived of their dignity and the basic requirements for a decent life.

Sincerely,
Nancy Murray,
President
Gaza Mental Health Foundation, Inc.