Eyad al-Sarraj
إياد السراج
Psychiatrist and founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme
Gaza's first practising psychiatrist, who built mental health care under occupation into a form of human rights work.
Eyad al-Sarraj was born in Beersheba in 1944; his family fled to Gaza in 1948, and he lived there for most of his life. He studied medicine in Alexandria and psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, then returned to Gaza, where he directed the mental health services and became the Strip’s first practising psychiatrist. In 1990 he founded the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, which treats children, women, and victims of torture and political violence.
For al-Sarraj, mental health and human rights were inseparable: trauma, he argued, could not be treated while the conditions producing it continued. He documented the psychological toll of occupation and torture, testified before international bodies, and received several human rights awards. Though imprisoned more than once for his criticism — of both Israeli practices and Palestinian Authority abuses — he remained committed to nonviolence and to dialogue with Israeli peace activists. He died of leukemia in December 2013.
Selected contributions
- Founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (1990)
- Director of Mental Health Services, Gaza (1981–1988)
- Testimony on Gaza to the UN Fact Finding Mission (2009)
Sources
Further reading
An external biography or archive holding more on this life than the entry above.