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IPFS News Link • Palestine -- Israel

Gaza: Children in crisis

• http://www.middleeasteye.net, Hilary Wise

In an award-winning film, she speaks of her past experiences with an almost eerie detachment, as if she is telling someone else's story. 

One can only guess at what is going on behind that calm facade, as she sends a heartbreaking message to other, luckier children: "I ask the children of the world to take good care of their mothers and fathers... People don't appreciate the blessings they have till they lose them."

For years after that shattering event, Mona obsessively drew and redrew the images that haunted her - "a sea of blood and body parts". She suffered recurring nightmares, fits of anger and lack of concentration at school. But thanks to a loving family environment and intensive therapy, she seems to be gradually recovering.

Of the 900,000 children in Gaza, UNICEF reckons 373,000 are in need of "psycho-social first aid".

The Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP), which runs three psychiatric clinics in Gaza treating both children and adults, struggles to cope. Psychiatrist Yasser Abu Jamei, who heads the GCMHP and who himself lost many members of his extended family in last summer's onslaught, said: "There was no place for parents and children to hide... You never knew where the bombs were going fall."


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