Over 800 Mental Health Professionals Sign Open Letter Condemning Oppression in Palestine
UK Mental health professionals call for ethical accountability and solidarity with the Palestinian people
In October 2023, a Humanistic Psychotherapist initiated an open letter that has since garnered over 800 signatures from UK-based Mental Health Professionals. The letter expresses solidarity with the Palestinian people and denounces the ongoing oppression they face. It calls on mental health professionals to recognise their ethical duty to speak out against injustice and to uphold the values of human rights, dignity, and psychological well-being for all.
The full letter:
An open letter to mental health professionals.
“And no part of this enormous wound has held you back in any way.
And no part of this enormous wound has pushed you in any way.
You have been free to discover yourself at last such as you really are.” (Fanon, 1964)
This passage is from Fanon’s “Letter to a Frenchman” where he addresses French doctors in occupied Algeria. Fanon wanted to rehumanise the medical encounter, and for his colleagues to see colonial occupation as the “enormous WOUND” that it is (1965). As colonisers and people who benefited from that violence, they were incapable of doing so, unwilling to confront their own complicity in producing that wound.
‘For there is not a European who is not revolted, indignant, alarmed at everything, except at the fate to which the Arab is subjected’. - Fanon (1964:48)
Through this open letter, I call on colleagues to respond to this by becoming present and opening their eyes to the situation. To see the Palestinian situation as a colonial occupation in process, and to sense the enormous wound it causes and its ramifications.
We are empathetic and attuned to people’s wounds as part of our job. We dive everyday in the depths of human distress and attune the some of the most painful experiences people have been through. However, we, as a group, seem incapable of opening our eyes to the worst injustices of all: ongoing colonial violence and genocide. We seem incapable of using our voices to support people going through this.
If we can’t understand the feelings of existential threat and the wounds of injustice, we at least need to open our eyes and witness fully, with all of our souls, the reality of this wound. We have no business calling ourselves committed to any type of justice otherwise. We are seeing too many of our colleagues, who speak of anti-racism, anti-oppression, and decolonisation, some of them building careers and publishing on the subject, be silent in the face of genocide. Fanon’s letter speaks of unwillingness to see, but also of silence.
Fanon is speaking to you. I am not writing today to analyse the situation, but to issue a call on people in our profession, and a challenge. Our profession, the theories we use and our practices have served for a long time to justify and maintain oppressive systems. It does not matter that we think of our work as liberating for individuals, allowing them to be more authentic. The truth is that, at its inception, psychological sciences participated actively in the dehumanisation of non-white peoples to justify and maintain the colonial power of white groups.
To this day the practices that individualise distress and pay attention only to the inner and interpersonal processes serve to deny the impact that colonialism and oppression as collective experiences have on mental health. We as professionals who benefit from this have a responsibility in challenging it in our work. It is time to resist individualising issues and dehumanising oppressed peoples by choosing not to open our eyes to the origin of their wound.
In light of what is happening today to Palestinian people, and in particular to Gazans, our responsibility includes a commitment to being fully present to the reality of the colonial violence, physical and mental, that befalls on them. To witness their suffering, to speak up, and to elevate their humanity in response to the efforts of our governments and mainstream media to dehumanise them.
Refuse the dehumanisation.
Hope is anti-colonial
I call on colleagues to open their eyes and see all anti-colonial struggles, from Palestine to Abya Yala (the Americas), to Australia, as the same global struggle. Interlinked. We can participate in this struggle but to do that, we can’t hide, we need to take risks and not let our fear paralyse us.
Look at the painful reality of ongoing colonialism, and also believe in ongoing decolonisation. Draw from the strength of your roots, whether this mean drawing from community strength, intergenerational experiences of survival or (physical, cultural, or intellectual) ancestors’ wisdom.
Despite how hard it can be, we need to resist hopelessness, isolation and numbing. It’s what colonial violence wants us to feel.
Colonialism needs us to accept that we can’t do anything to help, to think that we might as well not even try given the circumstances. It needs us to be afraid of the risks we might take by taking action.
And of course, being only human, we can be afraid. Gauge your risks, but be aware that they are nothing compared to what Palestinians are going through. Palestinians are facing a threat to their very existence. They have been for a long time. Let us do our best to be present where needed. It is our responsibility to muster the courage today. Many people gathered around the world in support of Palestinians this weekend. We are not alone.
Finally, I call on colleagues in the mental health professions to help lift humans from the zone of non-being. To resist lukewarm and safe statements, to express unwavering love and support for Palestinians.
Like Indigenous peoples all over the world continue to live on and demand land back 500 years after European colonialism started its waves of destruction, so will Palestinians continue to exist. As Fanon said, colonialism is never complete, the zone of non-being is never total (1963).
It is through the cracks of colonialism that Palestine will be free.
To sign the letter, click on this link