I want to tell you a story the story of
a war that ended decades ago in the
Middle East and what it can teach us
about mental health mind you though I’m
now going to tell you another story
about war trauma which is probably the
first thought that crossed your mind
instead I want us to think differently
about both mental health and the Middle
East
stories matter and what matters even
more is the way stories are told these
days we keep hearing stories about the
region black and white fragments and
snapshots about this and that immediate
crisis and conflict as if they were
given and inevitable buzz words mislead
and yet in the midst of this illusion of
overexposure to other people’s stories
on our phones we assume that we know the
stories of people and places we’ve
become short-term spectators what we
don’t hear often however are the stories
of how we got here
now how many of you in this room know
much about the iran-iraq war of the
1980s Michele Evans well this year marks
the 30th anniversary of the end of one
of the longest and deadliest trench wars
of the 20th century in 1980 just the
year after the Iranian Revolution Iraq
invaded Iran and ignited a war that
lasted eight years longer than both
world wars combined
it eventually ended in 1988 now let’s
think about how this story is told in
academia and in policy circles it’s
usually told in the language of military
and geopolitical analysis which creates
the illusion that the war ended but did
it really
according to statistics it didn’t it
left behind over 1 million deaths in
both countries
two hundred thousand Iraqi soldiers
killed half a million Iranian disabled
veterans 150,000 Iranian orphaned
children Iraq targeted Iranian civilians
and Iraqi Kurds with missiles and
chemical weapons and today more than a
hundred thousand victims of chemical
warfare continued to suffer physically
and psychologically and of course in
Iraq additional Wars and sanctions
continue to this day each war has an
afterlife a physical one and a
psychological one and those of us who
study this afterlife use another
language their language of Statistics
and pathology the number of the dead and
casualties or the presence of trauma and
post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD
of course these numbers and labels are
important and we need to do everything
we can for those who suffer from mental
illness but when the psychological
impact of wars is reduced only to
illness we create another illusion that
what’s needed is only a clinical
solution but what are the stories behind
these numbers and labels well we often
tell those stories in binary narratives
and we focus on extreme conditions
victim survivor death life illness
health being traumatized being resilient
and in such stereotyping we diminish the
complexity and diversity of life stories
what I want to do today is to focus on
the gray zone in between these extremes
the seemingly quiet places that are
often overlooked in discussions of
mental health
now what images come to your mind when I
mention childhood and war what if
instead I asked you to imagine a war as
it is lived through the eyes of a child
a child who’s not physically injured but
his entire childhood is shaped during
wartime her name is Sarah the daughter
of a veteran Sarah was in elementary
school when her family was displaced
from a war zone city and relocated to
Tehran but even there the war was
everywhere it was alive in the news in
the media in school in the architecture
of the city and it keeps coming back in
her memories I remember a lot of things
I remember staying up all night praying
for my father
I remember missing my friends I remember
collecting money for soldiers the piggy
banks that the school had given us over
in the shape of grenades I remember the
sound of bombs
I remember my mom’s hasty phone calls to
find out whose house was hit to this day
the sound of fireworks still triggers
such panic in me somehow at the age
seven I knew exactly what the war meant
but make no mistake we not traumatize
victims or nostalgic mourners I mean
looking at war footages you might think
our childhood was a massive trauma I
mean yes it was horrible and scary but
there was also life I remember the first
day of school I remember the taste of
strawberry ice cream my uncle’s wedding
and my sister’s obsessive dancing to
Billie Jean life goes on
I remember how we’d wait all day for
five o’clock to watch cartoons on
television but of course the bloody
thing could be suddenly interrupted with
the sound of sirens telling
to run to shelters sometimes we’d spend
the night in our building’s basement
shelter neighbors became one big family
sharing snacks and stories and rumor and
gossip mister Mokhtar was planning her
son’s wedding there mr. Abbasi was
fiddling with the radio tuning to radio
BBC for the real news of course we were
the lucky ones not living in war zones
we got to have imaginary friends and
fill the gap between missile attacks
with cartoons and play and mischief you
know my generation is who it is today
how then can we understand the
psychological impact of Wars you see as
clinicians we often focus on individual
experiences such as psychological trauma
as anthropologists and social scientists
on the other hand we studied the
cultural and social impact of wars I
happen to be someone with a foot in each
discipline and over a decade of work on
generational memory among Iranians I’ve
tried to combine psychological and
anthropological perspectives and to
think about mental health in a way that
is faithful to both individual and
collective experiences one of the things
that I do in my book is to show how the
social transformations of the 1980s
shaped the identity of those who were
children at the time this was the decade
of many intersecting ruptures in Iran
post-revolutionary turmoil and the
repression of political dissent inside
the country and of course the imposition
of war and sanctions from the outside
what is striking in stories like Sarah’s
is how the phrase our generation always
surfaced for Sarah the war is an
integral element of her generations
identity I found that in telling their
stories the individual I immediately
transitions into a collective we seeking
recognition and comfort in a shared
identity that gave meaning to their
experiences and I found that these
generational identities deeply inform a
society’s sense of well-being and its
relationship to the future do they
perceive themselves as victims or as
heroic survivors no but the past has
shaped their way of being in the world
you see remembering for them is not only
a psychological necessity it is also a
political claim a claim to their version
of history
two alternative narratives of loss and
neglect narratives that are often
obscured in the ways official histories
are written for many Iranians for
example the statistics I shared with you
earlier are painful reminders of a war
protracted by state propaganda and
deceit and a painful reminder of their
common knowledge that the United States
and European governments willingly
provided Saddam Hussein with chemical
weapons intelligence and impunity and so
when decades later the illegal invasion
of Iraq in 2003 was justified the way it
was the hypocrisy was not lost on them
they remembered what the world seemed to
have forgotten but such remembering is
not a passive space of resentment or
resignation and the contrary it becomes
a drive for political participation for
civil society for art music for being
part of a global conversation their
collective memories are painful and yet
they’re culturally generative creating
their own worlds with new expressions
new forms of kinship identity politics
solidarity and even humor and new hopes
and aspirations for a world without Wars
but is there a place for this kind of
remembering when we talk about mental
health this is precisely the gap I’d
like to address today you see from a
clinical perspective we study Wars
looking for signs of trauma and
individual symptoms such as Sarah’s
reaction to the sound of fireworks no
doubt it is crucial to treat individual
symptoms but what about when collective
grief and solidarity last for decades
and seep into the social mind what if
people actively remember and seek
recognition and accountability and
dignity as much as they demand clinical
help you see the problem begins when
trauma becomes
our primary lens for understanding
everything that wars
leave behind when we measure
psychological well-being only in terms
of disorder and symptoms we silenced the
social and political life of memory we
mask the powerful agency with which
people endure and overcome
so we medicalised and we D politicize
experiences that are in their essence
political tragedies and why does this
matter now you might ask because this
political afterlife should be part of
our understanding of mental health
because each of today’s ongoing
conflicts are writing the story of
future moral aspirations and claims to
truth that future belongs to all of us
my work on the iran-iraq war
made me realize how badly we need to
rethink the way we understand mental
health and in general well-being in this
region that we’ve come to call the
Middle East a region that is
increasingly misrepresented today and
its diverse cultures and histories are
reduced often to stories of conflict and
trauma and war and religious tension
such representations have both ethical
and clinical implications as you know in
many mental health and humanitarian
debates and even in TED Talks we keep
hearing demands for more and more
clinical intervention in the region
that’s surely necessary but the solution
to a political problem cannot be solely
a medical one we need an inclusive
mental health paradigm that can also
incorporate the social meaning of
experiences that escape statistics and
diagnostic labels we need to understand
how history is psychologically imprinted
in the collective mind over time
we can then make better clinical
decisions better policy and perhaps
think twice before we talk of human
lives as collateral damage obviously
these discussions about politics and
justice are not new many thinkers have
been talking about this for a very long
time but it is as if these discussions
belong in academia or journalism or art
or politics in fields that are separate
from health care what am arguing here is
that they need to be part of our
discussion about mental health and this
is why in 2014 I launched a
collaborative platform in order to
invite scholars policymakers healthcare
professionals historians artists into an
interdisciplinary conversation about
what mental health means in the region I
organized the pilot workshop that year
and some of the amazing experts that I
invited were puzzled at first they would
say well but I don’t work on mental
health I’m an artist or I’m a historian
or I work on poetry and my response was
always exactly that’s why I’m inviting
you because you do work on mental health
and that’s how our conversation began
and three years later a wonderful
colleague joined me in running the
platform and together we are now
expanding it I call this initiative
beyond trauma because if we understand
mental health as more than a clinical
issue we can then expand our clinical
perspective beyond trauma beyond the
short-term and beyond the individual
what do I mean by that first to go
beyond trauma means not imposing a
one-size-fits-all approach everywhere
instead let’s ask how people experience
and live through psychological pain and
with what cultural and therapeutic
resources what can we learn from the
region’s diverse medical histories moral
traditions its dynamic oral cultures
storytelling poetry
everyday practices second to go beyond
our short-term focus shifting from
crisis to crisis means sustaining our
attention asking what happens not just
now but decades later when the dust
settles and when children grow into
adults
what anxieties aspirations and politics
do they internalize and finally to go
beyond the individual means that the
meaning of collective experiences should
be part of the debate that mental health
is not an issue separate from justice
accountability and empathy for people’s
political plight and so today as we near
the 40th anniversary of the beginning of
the iran-iraq war let’s remember that
wars do not end they continue to live on
in cities in bodies in the collective
mind they shape the future and let’s
remember that across Syria and Yemen and
Gaza as was the case in Rwanda in
Vietnam there are always new generations
of rememberers we are where we are
because we have failed to look back and
listen because we have abstracted other
people’s pain we’re all implicated with
our failure of imagination political
will and empathy and finally let’s
remember that for every story that is
told another is made invisible so the
next time you hear bite-size headlines
in the news I ask you to pause question
how people’s stories are told ask what
stories are muted awaken your
imagination picture the life behind
those headlines look for stories people
tell not the stories written about them
and in this storm of buzz words tune
your ears to stories of love and law
and hope and pain and pleasure stories
that are no doubt complex unpolished and unfinished as is life itself thank you
a war that ended decades ago in the
Middle East and what it can teach us
about mental health mind you though I’m
now going to tell you another story
about war trauma which is probably the
first thought that crossed your mind
instead I want us to think differently
about both mental health and the Middle
East
stories matter and what matters even
more is the way stories are told these
days we keep hearing stories about the
region black and white fragments and
snapshots about this and that immediate
crisis and conflict as if they were
given and inevitable buzz words mislead
and yet in the midst of this illusion of
overexposure to other people’s stories
on our phones we assume that we know the
stories of people and places we’ve
become short-term spectators what we
don’t hear often however are the stories
of how we got here
now how many of you in this room know
much about the iran-iraq war of the
1980s Michele Evans well this year marks
the 30th anniversary of the end of one
of the longest and deadliest trench wars
of the 20th century in 1980 just the
year after the Iranian Revolution Iraq
invaded Iran and ignited a war that
lasted eight years longer than both
world wars combined
it eventually ended in 1988 now let’s
think about how this story is told in
academia and in policy circles it’s
usually told in the language of military
and geopolitical analysis which creates
the illusion that the war ended but did
it really
according to statistics it didn’t it
left behind over 1 million deaths in
both countries
two hundred thousand Iraqi soldiers
killed half a million Iranian disabled
veterans 150,000 Iranian orphaned
children Iraq targeted Iranian civilians
and Iraqi Kurds with missiles and
chemical weapons and today more than a
hundred thousand victims of chemical
warfare continued to suffer physically
and psychologically and of course in
Iraq additional Wars and sanctions
continue to this day each war has an
afterlife a physical one and a
psychological one and those of us who
study this afterlife use another
language their language of Statistics
and pathology the number of the dead and
casualties or the presence of trauma and
post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD
of course these numbers and labels are
important and we need to do everything
we can for those who suffer from mental
illness but when the psychological
impact of wars is reduced only to
illness we create another illusion that
what’s needed is only a clinical
solution but what are the stories behind
these numbers and labels well we often
tell those stories in binary narratives
and we focus on extreme conditions
victim survivor death life illness
health being traumatized being resilient
and in such stereotyping we diminish the
complexity and diversity of life stories
what I want to do today is to focus on
the gray zone in between these extremes
the seemingly quiet places that are
often overlooked in discussions of
mental health
now what images come to your mind when I
mention childhood and war what if
instead I asked you to imagine a war as
it is lived through the eyes of a child
a child who’s not physically injured but
his entire childhood is shaped during
wartime her name is Sarah the daughter
of a veteran Sarah was in elementary
school when her family was displaced
from a war zone city and relocated to
Tehran but even there the war was
everywhere it was alive in the news in
the media in school in the architecture
of the city and it keeps coming back in
her memories I remember a lot of things
I remember staying up all night praying
for my father
I remember missing my friends I remember
collecting money for soldiers the piggy
banks that the school had given us over
in the shape of grenades I remember the
sound of bombs
I remember my mom’s hasty phone calls to
find out whose house was hit to this day
the sound of fireworks still triggers
such panic in me somehow at the age
seven I knew exactly what the war meant
but make no mistake we not traumatize
victims or nostalgic mourners I mean
looking at war footages you might think
our childhood was a massive trauma I
mean yes it was horrible and scary but
there was also life I remember the first
day of school I remember the taste of
strawberry ice cream my uncle’s wedding
and my sister’s obsessive dancing to
Billie Jean life goes on
I remember how we’d wait all day for
five o’clock to watch cartoons on
television but of course the bloody
thing could be suddenly interrupted with
the sound of sirens telling
to run to shelters sometimes we’d spend
the night in our building’s basement
shelter neighbors became one big family
sharing snacks and stories and rumor and
gossip mister Mokhtar was planning her
son’s wedding there mr. Abbasi was
fiddling with the radio tuning to radio
BBC for the real news of course we were
the lucky ones not living in war zones
we got to have imaginary friends and
fill the gap between missile attacks
with cartoons and play and mischief you
know my generation is who it is today
how then can we understand the
psychological impact of Wars you see as
clinicians we often focus on individual
experiences such as psychological trauma
as anthropologists and social scientists
on the other hand we studied the
cultural and social impact of wars I
happen to be someone with a foot in each
discipline and over a decade of work on
generational memory among Iranians I’ve
tried to combine psychological and
anthropological perspectives and to
think about mental health in a way that
is faithful to both individual and
collective experiences one of the things
that I do in my book is to show how the
social transformations of the 1980s
shaped the identity of those who were
children at the time this was the decade
of many intersecting ruptures in Iran
post-revolutionary turmoil and the
repression of political dissent inside
the country and of course the imposition
of war and sanctions from the outside
what is striking in stories like Sarah’s
is how the phrase our generation always
surfaced for Sarah the war is an
integral element of her generations
identity I found that in telling their
stories the individual I immediately
transitions into a collective we seeking
recognition and comfort in a shared
identity that gave meaning to their
experiences and I found that these
generational identities deeply inform a
society’s sense of well-being and its
relationship to the future do they
perceive themselves as victims or as
heroic survivors no but the past has
shaped their way of being in the world
you see remembering for them is not only
a psychological necessity it is also a
political claim a claim to their version
of history
two alternative narratives of loss and
neglect narratives that are often
obscured in the ways official histories
are written for many Iranians for
example the statistics I shared with you
earlier are painful reminders of a war
protracted by state propaganda and
deceit and a painful reminder of their
common knowledge that the United States
and European governments willingly
provided Saddam Hussein with chemical
weapons intelligence and impunity and so
when decades later the illegal invasion
of Iraq in 2003 was justified the way it
was the hypocrisy was not lost on them
they remembered what the world seemed to
have forgotten but such remembering is
not a passive space of resentment or
resignation and the contrary it becomes
a drive for political participation for
civil society for art music for being
part of a global conversation their
collective memories are painful and yet
they’re culturally generative creating
their own worlds with new expressions
new forms of kinship identity politics
solidarity and even humor and new hopes
and aspirations for a world without Wars
but is there a place for this kind of
remembering when we talk about mental
health this is precisely the gap I’d
like to address today you see from a
clinical perspective we study Wars
looking for signs of trauma and
individual symptoms such as Sarah’s
reaction to the sound of fireworks no
doubt it is crucial to treat individual
symptoms but what about when collective
grief and solidarity last for decades
and seep into the social mind what if
people actively remember and seek
recognition and accountability and
dignity as much as they demand clinical
help you see the problem begins when
trauma becomes
our primary lens for understanding
everything that wars
leave behind when we measure
psychological well-being only in terms
of disorder and symptoms we silenced the
social and political life of memory we
mask the powerful agency with which
people endure and overcome
so we medicalised and we D politicize
experiences that are in their essence
political tragedies and why does this
matter now you might ask because this
political afterlife should be part of
our understanding of mental health
because each of today’s ongoing
conflicts are writing the story of
future moral aspirations and claims to
truth that future belongs to all of us
my work on the iran-iraq war
made me realize how badly we need to
rethink the way we understand mental
health and in general well-being in this
region that we’ve come to call the
Middle East a region that is
increasingly misrepresented today and
its diverse cultures and histories are
reduced often to stories of conflict and
trauma and war and religious tension
such representations have both ethical
and clinical implications as you know in
many mental health and humanitarian
debates and even in TED Talks we keep
hearing demands for more and more
clinical intervention in the region
that’s surely necessary but the solution
to a political problem cannot be solely
a medical one we need an inclusive
mental health paradigm that can also
incorporate the social meaning of
experiences that escape statistics and
diagnostic labels we need to understand
how history is psychologically imprinted
in the collective mind over time
we can then make better clinical
decisions better policy and perhaps
think twice before we talk of human
lives as collateral damage obviously
these discussions about politics and
justice are not new many thinkers have
been talking about this for a very long
time but it is as if these discussions
belong in academia or journalism or art
or politics in fields that are separate
from health care what am arguing here is
that they need to be part of our
discussion about mental health and this
is why in 2014 I launched a
collaborative platform in order to
invite scholars policymakers healthcare
professionals historians artists into an
interdisciplinary conversation about
what mental health means in the region I
organized the pilot workshop that year
and some of the amazing experts that I
invited were puzzled at first they would
say well but I don’t work on mental
health I’m an artist or I’m a historian
or I work on poetry and my response was
always exactly that’s why I’m inviting
you because you do work on mental health
and that’s how our conversation began
and three years later a wonderful
colleague joined me in running the
platform and together we are now
expanding it I call this initiative
beyond trauma because if we understand
mental health as more than a clinical
issue we can then expand our clinical
perspective beyond trauma beyond the
short-term and beyond the individual
what do I mean by that first to go
beyond trauma means not imposing a
one-size-fits-all approach everywhere
instead let’s ask how people experience
and live through psychological pain and
with what cultural and therapeutic
resources what can we learn from the
region’s diverse medical histories moral
traditions its dynamic oral cultures
storytelling poetry
everyday practices second to go beyond
our short-term focus shifting from
crisis to crisis means sustaining our
attention asking what happens not just
now but decades later when the dust
settles and when children grow into
adults
what anxieties aspirations and politics
do they internalize and finally to go
beyond the individual means that the
meaning of collective experiences should
be part of the debate that mental health
is not an issue separate from justice
accountability and empathy for people’s
political plight and so today as we near
the 40th anniversary of the beginning of
the iran-iraq war let’s remember that
wars do not end they continue to live on
in cities in bodies in the collective
mind they shape the future and let’s
remember that across Syria and Yemen and
Gaza as was the case in Rwanda in
Vietnam there are always new generations
of rememberers we are where we are
because we have failed to look back and
listen because we have abstracted other
people’s pain we’re all implicated with
our failure of imagination political
will and empathy and finally let’s
remember that for every story that is
told another is made invisible so the
next time you hear bite-size headlines
in the news I ask you to pause question
how people’s stories are told ask what
stories are muted awaken your
imagination picture the life behind
those headlines look for stories people
tell not the stories written about them
and in this storm of buzz words tune
your ears to stories of love and law
and hope and pain and pleasure stories
that are no doubt complex unpolished and unfinished as is life itself thank you
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