Luma Tarazi: “People Are More Aware Now That Investing in Mental Health Care Increases Resilience”

Luma Tarazi has worked as a clinical psychologist and technical advisor for close to two decades for national and international NGOs. She specializes in training and material development and regularly trains Jerusalem’s clinical psychologists.

It’s a particularly trying time for Jerusalem’s Palestinian community. Many people have relatives trapped in Gaza, and Israel’s war on Gaza, which erupted on October 7, 2023, also impacts East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank. Settler violence and raids from the army have increased exponentially. Palestinian Jerusalemites are cut off from the rest of the West Bank due to checkpoint closures, and when checkpoints are open, they are sites of harassment and insult. On top of that, Palestinian Jerusalemites deal with day-to-day challenges of house arrests, home raids, home demolitions, domestic violence, and increased surveillance.

Luma trains clinical psychologists in East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank so they can provide a wide range of projects to promote health, human rights, women’s empowerment, family protection, gender equality, sexual health and well-being, and economic development. She currently works as an instructor of psychology at Birzeit University and has been a member of the Board of Directors of the YWCA of Palestine in East Jerusalem since 2017. She is dedicated to community work and the well-being of youth—especially young women.

Luma recently spoke with Jerusalem Story about her experiences training clinical psychologists in East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, the challenges Jerusalem’s psychologists are currently facing, and how she meets the changing needs of the community.

Jerusalem Story: What led you to become a psychologist?

Luma Tarazi: I became interested in the field of mental health while I studied translation and English linguistics at Birzeit University. I enjoyed the psychology of language, and my personal character traits are very connected to human interaction and communication, so I just followed a career that fit my personality.

I built my career with the support of my professors at Birzeit University and finished my studies in the US in with a master’s of science degree in clinical psychology at Eastern Michigan University as a Fulbright candidate. I did an internship in a clinical practice in Walnut Creek in California and then came back in 2002 and served the community in Palestine, working as a clinical psychologist at the Palestinian Counseling Center.

I then continued my education in Europe. I studied at the University of Berlin and Freud Institute, and achieved a high diploma in supervision in 2015.

When I returned to Ramallah, I worked in technical support and clinical supervision for service providers. Now, my main work is to support service providers, build their capacities, and take care of their mental health while they offer all of these services to people. When I have time, I have a clinical practice, but mostly I work as a mental health consultant for different NGOs. Currently I’m at Juzoor, and before that, I was at Save the Children, the World Health Organization (WHO), and other local organizations.

JS: You regularly train psychologists in Jerusalem. What challenges are they currently facing?

LT: First, they face the challenge of finding employment, because there aren’t many mental health and psychosocial support organizations in East Jerusalem. When they do find work, they are faced with serious social problems, which have a large psychological impact. This includes poverty, lack of opportunities in education, very high rates of student school withdrawal, domestic violence, and then of course working and living under difficult circumstances in general.

Another difficulty the community faces is a lack of technical support and lack of support for their own well-being and care. There are not enough specialized psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, therapists, or mental health nurses to meet the community’s needs.

JS: What’s changed since you first started serving the community in 2002?

LT: I think the major change is the Palestinian community’s perception of mental health. Now, people accept that mental health is part of holistic health, and taking care of the emotional self is as important as taking care of the physical self. There used to be a lot of stigma associated with mental health conditions that prevented people from seeking help, but that has reduced tremendously due to the collaborative and collective work in the community. People have become much more open to the issue, and we see people seeking support, especially for children and young people.

Now every school in the Ministry of Education in the Jerusalem and Palestinian Authority school systems has a counselor, and we have access to many different NGOs that cover different interventions in mental health. They’re really overloaded in fact, and now we need more staff and more therapy spaces because the demand is so high.

JS: What would you say is the biggest obstacle for mental health professionals in Jerusalem right now?

LT: The biggest obstacle now is the high demand for mental health support versus the availability of services, and organizations are facing the challenge of funding and restrictions on their services.

JS: How can people heal in this situation?

LT: We take it one day at a time. And we have other issues that aren’t related to the political situation—everyday life, like diseases, accidents, domestic issues. These problems still exist, and many of them need support services for family conflicts, divorce issues, employment issues, and so on. So we’re seeing more male clients reaching out to the clinics and centers than ever before, and more parents are seeking counseling for their children. It’s not all about politics.

But we’re actually quite far ahead of our neighbors. We have psychologists and mental health programs in our colleges, we have school counselors, therapists, even the career of psychology is sophisticated and has been developed. And that’s unique if you compare it to Jordan, Lebanon, even Greece, where they heavily rely on medicine to solve mental issues, and they have less services on offer within the NGO system. In Palestine, historically we’ve been dependent on the civil society organizations, so this community stayed strong and worked alongside the government to support people. We are leaders in mental health services in the region.

JS: How do you think your work will change once the war is over?

LT: I don’t think it will change. We’ll continue to focus on people’s mental health and their lives. People will heal and recover and be productive again, and those who need more specialized support will be provided for. We’ll activate all our resources and invest in training people who have the nature to support others, so that our community can continue to be resilient and community members can depend on one another.