Dear Scottish friends of Palestinians and supporters, 

Once again we are unable to hold our annual fundraiser in Christ Church so we have set up a Just Giving page to which we hope you will contribute and share with your friends. We chose to focus on Mental Health this year as often, inevitably, the priority is on urgent emergency care. We all know that poor mental health has a devastating effect on individuals, their families and society destroying lives and futures. This is especially acute in Gaza.

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The Gaza Strip is considered one of the areas of multiple ongoing conflicts. Repeated Israeli aggressions, siege, an internal division, and the collapsed economic situation are all factors negatively affecting the mental health of the population in the Gaza strip.

Existing mental health services suffer from a lack of trained and experienced mental health workers; a poorly coordinated mental health emergency response; a chronic shortage of psychotropic drugs; and a critical lack of prevention, intervention, and rehabilitation programmes.

In addition, the coronavirus outbreak has had a negative psychological impact on people in Gaza.

Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) and their local partner in Gaza, Friends for Mental Health (FFMH), aim to improve social awareness towards mental health issues and decrease the stigma of mental illness inside the Gaza community. FFMH supports and advocates for the service users and families of mental health and psychosocial services to support them to live in dignity within their communities. FFMH are a group of community activists and volunteers powered by dedication and passion to coordinate and integrate governmental and non-governmental efforts to ensure high quality of mental health and psychosocial services based on principles of justice, equality and respect of the rights of service users and their families.

Our fundraising cannot solve all mental health difficulties in the Gaza Strip but your generosity will contribute to mental health in this distressed community. It will also remind the people of Gaza they are not forgotten.

If you want to watch the film that FFMH made about the work that they do, copy and paste the URL below into your browser.

https://youtu.be/VRJbAVlsL-Q

Salwa, Janet and Maha