In Palestine, the occupation permeates every aspect of life, and mental healthcare is not immune to it. Who is allowed access to treatment? Who is allowed to live, who is allowed to die? Israeli necropolitics demands the slow or sudden deaths of Palestinians. As Dr. Samah Jabr states, there is no “post-” traumatic stress disorder in Palestine—they live under a constant state of stress. Clinicians process the very same horrors that their patients do during therapeutic sessions.

Drs. Lara and Stephen Sheehi join Healthcare Workers for Palestine to discuss their book “Psychoanalysis Under Occupation” and its present-day significance. How do Palestinians resist zionism’s psychic intrusion, and instead reimagine lives and worlds after the end of occupation? We will also discuss what it means to deliver mental healthcare under the apartheid state, which constantly surveils and evaluates patients through a colonial lens, and connect it to our practice of medicine in the West.

Masks are required for this event.