Ethics in Mental Health Under Political Violence: The Case of Palestine

The authors examine the current genocide in Gaza in the context of the violent exploitation that has characterized human societies since pre-history and argue that a genuinely ethical mental health practice must name and actively confront such injustices as part of its professionalism. The authors observe that many individual mental health professionals globally have spoken out to protest the genocide but that professional organizations and training institutions have generally failed to do so; indeed, the official pronouncements of professional organizations and educational institutions involved in mental health throughout the West—the USA and Western Europe—have endorsed and supported the policies of the state of Israel in alignment with the positions of their respective governments. The authors critique mental health theory's prevailing resistance to examining exploitative power relations as a false discourse of neutrality and a moral failure. Clinical material is presented from the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza that illustrates these themes. Recommendations are made for developing a theory and practice of mental health with human rights and the pursuit of justice as its core, through integrating sources of wisdom from oppressed populations and engaging in active resistance to forces that oppress them.