Monthly Archives: September 2013

On Lebanese Priorities: Creamfields Isn’t One

I had no idea what Creamfields was a few hours ago. I honestly would have loved for it to stay that way. But the cancellation of that party/festival/whatever has seemingly unleashed the most rage I’ve seen from Lebanese in a long time. I guess those party animals – all of them by the looks of it – and their parties are not to be messed with or the real shit that this country has been going through will hit the fan: an event cancellation that is.

Another “cancellation” took place today. Hard Rock Cafe, a place where many of us have had a lot of memories and ate great burgers, announced it will be closing in three days. A restaurant closing is, in itself, not that big of a deal. But for an international chain such as Hard Rock Cafe to pick up its baggage and leave is indicative of the situation that the country is going through, a situation which forced this institution that has been here for 18 years to call it quits, which will now leave all its employees jobless until they see another paycheck again. But Creamfields is the worst thing that happened today.

And today marks the 5th month that my best friend hasn’t seen a paycheck, while constantly searching for that company that would hire him. It also marks the one year mark for when my other best friend started searching for a job in her domain. Both of them have Masters degrees. Both of them are great at what they do. Both of them are super qualified. And yet both of them are now only numbers in a growing statistics that is, reportedly, 43% of the Lebanese population. That is slightly less than half of this country is unemployed. Banks and CEOs went on strike a couple of days ago to protest the situation, the lack of work, lack of money, lack of opportunities. But Creamfields is the worst thing that happened today.

Today is also a Friday. And as of now, no explosions have happened. But the day is not over yet so you never know. But two Fridays ago, we had an explosion in Tripoli. And it killed more than 50 people. A week before the Tripoli explosion, another part of the country was also torn apart and 40 people died. More than a thousand people got injured in both explosions. And yet people did not get into the state of emotional upheaval back then as Creamfields has put them in today. Perhaps today’s casualty is Creamfields. But yes, that is the worst thing that has happened today.

Today is another day when thousands of Syrian refugees flock into the country. I’m not really sure which statistic we’re observing lately but last time I checked, 25% of this country was refugees. In other words, when 3 of my friends and I hang out, odds are one of them is a refugee. Our municipalities and politicians spew racist words that resonate for a while and then die off but most of us have no grasp on the possible repercussions that these refugees have on the already-fragile and ever-so-distengrating fabric of our society. Those of us who work in the medical field have been put on high alert for all the possible new diseases that these refugees are bringing with them and which Lebanon hasn’t seen in a long time. There are no regulations whatsoever to handle those refugees. The laissez-faire attitude of everyday life that we have extends to them as well.

Today is another day of us being government-less. I remember the days when our current PM designate spoke about forming a cabinet in the soonest delay possible. I should have known not to be foolish enough not to take those 3 words in the Lebanese sense: “soonest” and “delay” and “possible.” Our economy is breaking down, our nonexistent borders are disintegrating, our security is now extinct. But that isn’t the worst thing to take place today.

Today is another day in ticking down till the time when it’s been 3 months since we were supposed to vote. It’s been almost 3 months that our democratic rights were taken away from us, that are our parliament decided it had done a decent enough job since 2009 to warrant a few extra years for its mandate, that there are enough pertinent reasons for them to come up with whatever logic they used in order to do what they did. It’s a big mess sure. But there are other things that are far worse which have taken place today.

Today is another day of us waiting for that possible American strike over Syria, the strike that doesn’t know when to start – if ever. It’s another day of us living through the repercussions of the war raging on next door as some of our men bring it home because they miss fights, having been without them for several years now. It’s another day of being part of this regional chess-game that knows no ends. But Creamfields is the worst thing that happened today.

Today is another day of us wasting time until we start drilling for oil because signing laws to ratify the regulations required have proved to be way too tedious. Today is another day as all our neighboring countries beat us in the race towards economical richness as we stand by watching. But don’t be fooled, our oil is not the worst thing to take place today.

Today is another day of Lebanese people not receiving medical care just because they can’t afford it, of some hospitals turning them down just because. It’s another day of us ticking down the clock to a possible war with our Southern neighbor. But we’re ready – or so they say. Except since the last time we had a war with that neighbor, we have failed to build shelters, warning systems or any other protection entity for our people down there. But their lives don’t matter because that’s nowhere near the worst thing that could take place.

I’d have loved to maybe attend Creamfields with you. I’d have liked a Hard Rock burger with that as well. But if I were a DJ who was lined up to play during that festival, I wouldn’t come here. And I would tell my friends not to come as well. Lebanese people love life, of course they do. There are even slogans about that precise issue. But the simple fact that we’re now “used” to all those bombs doesn’t mean others should be as well. Just because we’ve gotten numb to the absolute hell we’re living in doesn’t mean those tourists we all want to bring here are numb as well and are absolutely careless about their safety as we are. Ask yourself this: would you come to Lebanon, unless you absolutely had to, in times like these?

I’d have loved to also be on the front-lines of being angry about Creamfields being cancelled with you. But the sheer amount of hormones that have raged due to that event being cancelled has shown many of us, I hope, how disassociated many seem to be from the country in which that festival was supposed to take place, a disassociation that borders on the lines of pathological. But don’t mind me, I suppose, because the cancellation of Creamfields is definitely among the Lebanese priorities that ought to make people believe this country whose passport we proudly hold is a failure.

Let’s hope nothing happens to that rumored Coldplay concert.

AUB Tuition Fees: Where Do You Go Now?

I attended AUB from 2007 till 2010. Back in my days, which were not that long ago, we used to pay for 12 credits only even though we were able to register a maximum of 17 per semester.

I thought the system as it stood back then was great – it allowed me to be a full-time student and graduate on time without overburdening my parents with paying for every single credit that I was forced to take in order to count for the 90 required to get that coveted diploma. In 2010, however, AUB decided they were going to enforce new regulations that would raise the 12 credit standard to 15 for those enrolling in the upcoming semester.

I was graduating that year so it didn’t affect me. But I couldn’t disassociate myself from the notion that those who would come after me would be victims of these regulations that were not only unfounded at the time, but were also supported by baseless arguments that are still being used today. So as part of the AUB student body back then, we had a mass protest across campus. We boycotted classes. We paralyzed the university. We all participated. Then those heading the movement blew it by letting politics seep into it and the movement soon crumbled due to the too many heads that wanted to become leaders and instead of abolishing the tuition fees regulations, we simply postponed them. And they called it a victory – the students who slept on the floor outside College Hall for nights, however, did not. And those generations for whom we protested back then are receiving the short end of the stick we knew they would today.

Ever since I graduated, tuition fees at AUB have increased by 37%, at about $5000 per academic year. The increase includes another 6% hike this year. Technology fees for internet and connectivity on campus have also gone up by 50%. Wasn’t internet supposed to be getting cheaper in this country?

AUB is proud of its financial aid situation. Most applicants receive financial aid, they say. Bu there’s a huge difference between receiving aid in principle and the amount of aid a student gets: a 10% financial aid counts towards the former statistics. But is 10% enough?

AUB personnel who are handling these tuition increases justify them as due to the “increasingly bad economic situation in the country which necessitated such increases in order to keep AUB functional.”

The economic situation is touching everyone. I know of families who are well-off whose situation has deteriorated so rapidly lately that they’ve decided to simply leave. We have no government. Unemployment is reportedly at 42%.  Isn’t this also affecting the parents of the students who are supposed to pay those fees? Is it plausible to have American-type fees in a country where the average income doesn’t come close to the American average?

I guess this is what comes when student elections are more about politics and which political side wins than about those who actually work. As long as this party or that gets a majority at the Student Representatives Council and the USFC later on, everything is okay. There are no issues to raise, I suppose. Where is that free printing again?

It’s easy to dismiss all of this as simply “if you can’t afford AUB, then don’t consider it.” And for the majority of Lebanese people, this is the case. We’d also be delusional to believe that the students attending AUB are people who cannot afford it. But is that also enough reason to simply not talk about the issue and let such tuition prices rise go unchallenged, excluding the portions of Lebanese society that could have, at one point, afforded giving their children the best education that Lebanon could provide?

As an alumnus, there’s not really much I can do. But how about AUB students who are now nagging about these increases actually ask themselves, come November, when they’re voting: AUB tuition fees, where do you go now? Perhaps then they can form a student body that can create a road map to let people know which class of Lebanese gets access to Green Oval and that ugly Zaha Hadid building. 

 

The Ultimate Lebanese Medical Taboo: Mental Health, Not Demons. Psychiatry, Not Exorcisms

“Tell me I have cancer please,” she said as I stood next to her in the Emergency Room. “Tell me I have cancer,” she repeated again as if repetition would make it true. “I have cancer, yes I do. But I’m not insane.”

1 out of 5 Lebanese will have a mental disorder during their lifetime. This is in sync with international averages, which is interesting given the proficient history that serves as precipitating factors galore that we’ve had. But be sure of this: we all know someone who has or will have a mental disorder.

50 is the approximate number of registered and licensed psychiatrists that could potentially treat these patients. 50 for slightly less than one million. We have incredible shortage and yet it doesn’t show to everyone. Why? Because we simply don’t talk about mental health.

0 is the number of local insurance companies that cover for psychiatry. People don’t care enough about the issue in order to pressure them to make it included with their healthcare bundle. It will never happen, they’d say. It only happens to other people, just like every other serious illness I suppose.

A patient my age thought she was living inside a snake on Mars. That was where she was when she presented for hospitalization with bruises all over her body.
Her family denied knowledge of those bruises at first. But they were too systematic to be coincidental. She had bruises over here wrists, torso and legs. Her parents still didn’t budge.
The patient in question was living on Mars for a few months now. She wasn’t brought in earlier because her family thought she was possessed. A religious man had tried to perform an exorcism. We live in a country where it’s more acceptable to say demons are inside a family member than to say he was admitted at a hospital and is on a few meds.

That patient wasn’t the first nor the only one I saw who had attempted many exorcisms at the hand of religious figures before finally deciding that what was wrong wasn’t, in fact, spiritual as much as it was simply biological and chemical. It’s always that way: demons, not disease. Exorcisms, not medicine.

Wasn’t it at the times of our great-great-to the power ten-grandfathers that illnesses were associated with evil spirit?
That seems to still be the case today in Lebanon, and many other countries around the world, when it comes to mental health. The way we view mental health is also that of a taboo whereby we try to hide from it, shut it away as something not to be talked about. Even the suicide of Amina Ismail, sensational as it was, didn’t turn in the media into a discussion about mental health. It was a discussion about her private life. We have it among family members but instead of looking at those family members as sick people, akin to any person with any chronic illness, we look at them as burdens who got themselves into the mess they are in. My family is no exception to the statistics. And I’ve seen both ends of the spectrum: the cancer patient is seen as the sick one. The mentally ill patient is seen as the spoiled one.

The extent that mental health is a taboo in this country is best manifested when you observe the way people act around the possibility of a mental disorder diagnosis. Some of them exchange their names with numbers as identifiers. You can name me thirteen if you want to. Others would panic when psychiatric people are called in for a consult. “I’m not crazy, get out of my room.” Few are the people who are open about the idea of possibly going to the psychiatric ward. Even fewer are those who actually present voluntarily. The least of all people are those who are open about any possible mental disorder they might have and who actually view such disorders the way they view any other illness. You should also see the reaction that doctors who are specializing in psychiatry get every time they tell people of their plans.

Then there are the diseases which have been ridiculed by people to the extent that few seem to actually see them as illnesses anymore. Schizophrenia becomes split or multiple personalities just because Hollywood says so. Substance abuse becomes an issue that doesn’t concern us because we have willpower. “Tu deprimes today?” becomes the reference for depression.

I have a friend who was diagnosed a while back depression. Treatment has greatly improved his entire lifestyle and approach. And I’ve been thinking lately how lucky my friend was to be surrounded by people who viewed his diagnosis and treatment as a true medical case, not him being a wuss. If his case had been the latter, he’d have probably never improved and he would have never known that there is a better view of life than that of a person who was always sad, who had decreased interests, decreased appetite, guilt, suicidal thoughts.

“Madness is like gravity, all it takes is a little push,” the famous saying goes. Except “madness” is nothing like gravity and it takes more than just a push to get there. It’s a collection of genetics, biological predispositions and psychological stressors – sort of like any other disease, really. A mark of the development of a society is the way they view mental health. Lebanese tell their friends who are truly depressed to suck it up. They’d rather seek out exorcisms and justify diseases with demons than with simple facts. A person who develops substance abuse is weak-minded, his abuse never seen as an actual disorder. That patient who wished she had cancer has been “living with a demon” in her house for 6 years. She had brought in a priest every month. She still doesn’t know nor does she accept that the problem is probably with her and it could have been fixed 6 years ago. I guess some people would rather find solace in demons and live in Mars in the process because society thinks a Martian habitat is better for people like them than to acknowledge the simple and yet vitally important fact that it’s mental health, not demons. It’s psychiatry, not exorcisms and voodoo.

Why Lebanon’s Psychologists & Psychiatrists Are Now Talking on Homosexuality

You’ve probably heard a lot recently about how the Lebanese Psychology and Psychiatry associations have “come out” in the scientific favor of homosexual behavior in Lebanon.

For those of you who don’t know, the main reference for psychologists and psychiatrists, the DSM, has declassified homosexuality as an illness 40 years ago. So why is it now that Lebanon’s psychologists and psychiatrists are saying it isn’t so to the Lebanese public?

Well, I’m lucky enough to be passing through a psychiatry rotation at the country’s leading psychiatric facilities, under the auspices of one of the psychiatrists who was cited in the many press events that have taken place around the issue at hand. So I asked the question that has been going through my head for a long time now: why now, 40 years later, since the DSM update on the matter happened in 1973?

It seems the main reason behind the associations in question is because “the time is right.” What time is that?
Apparently, following the closure of Ghost in Dekwaneh, some TV stations hosted “psychologists” who proclaimed homosexuality as a disease precipitated by some forms of child abuse. This statement has absolutely no basis in reality so the Lebanese Psychology Association and the Lebanese Psychiatric Society decided that such erroneous information were not to be allowed to be propagated and that they were going to counter them.

The psychiatrist whom I asked for information on the matter was adamant to note that, contrary to the increasingly popular belief that such statements aim to get the law changed, it is not in fact their aim because “legislation doesn’t concern [Lebanon’s psychiatrists].” They are simply trying to raise awareness on the issue due to the way Lebanese media has been portraying it.

Do they hope the law gets changed one day? The psychiatrist in question said he’s personally in favor of changing the law. But it is not their job, nor is it part of their agenda. It is worth noting though, that even though Lebanon is technically “40 years late,” it’s still the “first country in the region to have such stances made public.”

Either way, based on my observations in psychiatry for the past few weeks, Lebanon has a long, long way to go regarding much of that domain.

America, Syria And All Those Arab Hypocrites

It’s funny how many people are suddenly against foreign interference in Syria. I’ve been wondering for the past week, as news of a possible American strike against Damascus surfaced, where all those people who cared about the sovereignty of Syria were for the past two years?

Arabs are interesting people. You only need to say America once in order to get them rallying behind their one common secondary enemy. The United States is the world’s biggest terrorist organization, some of them would say. You can sit back and laugh. The problem is that they firmly believe that the problem is actually the United States.

Media and people have rallied against any possible American strike, against the “imperialistic” regime that has targeted the countries of the Middle East for a long, long time. They started recalling Afghanistan and Iraq. They reminded people of the thousands who are dead because of this American greed for oil and power, although they failed to mention that Syria isn’t on the oil map. How dare they think they can use our airspace to fight our neighbors? How dare they think they can do whatever they please and not find repercussions? What right does the United States have to attack Syria?

Or so say the people whose brand of interference is not satisfied by America. Say no to foreign interference in Syria. Except foreign is only that when it’s non-Arab, no? Because somehow Arabs get to interfere in each other’s business as much as they want but it’s more than acceptable because they’re all one big happy family, raised on accepting each other’s boundaries and liberties.

For the past two years, every single Middle Eastern country has made it its bread and butter to interfere in Syrian affairs daily. But no one had a problem with that, right? Everyone is against foreign interference in Syria – except when said interference is at the hands of Hezbollah and Iran? Why? Because they’re helping the region keep one of the last remaining regimes against Israel’s zionist plans?

How exactly is the Assad regime resisting Israel? When was the last time that regime attempted to liberate the Golan Heights? How many bullets has Assad fired at the Israeli army in the past twenty years? What did Assad do when his country was bombed by Israel a few months ago?

How does anything that Assad did regarding Israel actually qualify as being a “resistance” regime? Does threatening Israel through Hezbollah in case the United States does anything to his country actually count?

The way I see it, the only country getting screwed in that non-sensical logic is Lebanon, as always. How long are we supposed to be the playground for that Syrian regime whenever it feels like it? How long are we supposed to be an extension of the war in Syria just because some parties in our country can’t mind their own business? How many more explosions that are caused, whether directly or indirectly by said parties, are we supposed to withstand just because they decided to go rescue their best friend next door? How many more independent war and peace decisions are we supposed to swallow just because they can do whatever they please? How is anything those parties are doing remotely acceptable to the entire well-being of this supposed nation that we want to call home?

Or is it because the Syrian regime is in bed with Iran and is therefore, by association, fighting Israel? And is “Israel” the only factor that is relevant enough to help us shape whatever policy or opinion we want to have? Is this “resistance” axis, whose only activity is that restricted to empty words, enough reason for us as Lebanese to let our country be screwed every single day?

Or are Arabs really afraid that those Western countries they despise actually have a form of accountability to their politicians that might see them removed from office that their countries would never, ever have? Because they’ll never see their parliaments vote against strikes? Because they’ll never see their presidents defer such decisions to legislative bodies? Because they’ll never see their leaders lose elections due to their political choices such as the ones that come to matters of war?

I also keep wondering how many people have actually forgotten what the Syrian regime is actually capable of when it comes to atrocities. Somehow, the discussion has become to let the regime stay because those rebels are worse. We’re fighting with the regime because we don’t want those “takfir” people to reach power. How abused has that word become lately? And how scared have people become of it without knowing that those who are supposedly fighting those “takfiryyin” are no different? This isn’t a matter of choosing the lesser evil. This isn’t a matter of bad versus worse. This is a matter of worst versus worst.

Do you not remember the years of human rights abuse that the Syrian regime has committed against Lebanese? Are you not familiar with the different types of experimentations that the regime has done on Lebanese people just because they defied it somehow? Do you not remember the children in Houla who were murdered ruthlessly last year by regime forces? How is this better than those “animals” who eat hearts and behead Christians? Are Christian lives more valuable just because they’re minorities? Can we stop using such useless arguments just because they allow you to have some form of cover for you coming out in support of a regime that is as horrible as the rebels you despise just because they don’t fit in your political mold of choice?

And then there are those who suddenly woke up from their two year coma and noticed there are human rights violation in Syria. Chemical weapons are a no-no – that is the red line that must not be crossed. Never mind the countless red lines that have already been crossed in Syria over the past two years as the entire world stood by watching. Human lives are not really worthy when their nationality is not of the decent kind. Those people have, therefore, decided that it makes sense for the United States to finally interfere in a “limited” strike whose effects might be anything but “limited.” Because human rights are somehow best perserved by increasing violence in a country that is already torn apart by violence? Because there’s no other solution to Syria except the easiest solution that involves sending missiles gifted from Washington, London and Paris to Damascus with love?

I don’t know who used sarin gas in Syria. Arguments can go both ways. Proof, be it fabricated or not, can also go both ways. Rebels or regime. Terrorists or the terrorist fighting those terrorists. But does it even matter who used sarin? The ship of common sense questions regarding Syria has sailed a long, long time ago. And by the looks of it, that ship won’t be coming back anytime soon because if there’s anything that life in the Middle East has taught us, it’s that the people of the region tend to think with their emotions when it comes to the matters of the head. But when it comes to politics, emotions have no role.