Nightmare Comes True

Stressors differ from each other in their severity in the degree to which they affect us. Our perception of the controlability and predictability of our stressors, is important to us to assess the degree of severity of them. The more the uncontrollable the stress the more it is severs. The more the unpredictable the stress the more it is severe.

These days in Baghdad are very stressful, of the main causes (maybe the most important one), the uncontrolability and unpredictability of the explotions that start in the last year to hit unexplained targets such as a market of old clothes visited by poor people, or the street of al mutanabbee which sells books for the most peacful people of Baghdad: those who love art,

or explotion of an old important bridge in centre of Baghdad causing many cars of civil people to drwan in the river of Tigris in an never dreamt of nightmare, which all of a sudden start to be a fact,

or explotion in a bus station in a poor sector of Baghdad.....

When you see in the eyes of people these days in Baghdad you see terror, it is somtime silly to ask them questions that intend to assess mental state of depression or anxiety like: do you see life is beautiful? or is life worth living? caus eif one says no, you do not have enough evidences to tell him that life is beautiful and it worth living, adn here comes the worst when the psychiatrist become depressed and encouraging depression.

suicide in baghdad

am sorry I was wrong about the study of Dr. Simon A. Ovanesian, I said he did not mension the prevalence of suicide in Baghdad. I was wrong, he mensioned that in the last paper of his study. He considered the population of Baghdad as being 4.68 million, and the prevalence to be 1.6/100000

Secrets of my Country (part 1 IZIDIES)

This is a picture of an IZIDI holy place

Am 29 now, all these years I have lived in Iraq, my country which I love, I am also curious to know about its history, but inspite of that it was only before 2 days when I first met an Iraqi woman from the IZIDI religion..

Many people do not know what this religions is, including me, it is a secret, a lovely secret, and I do not know why.....

In all the previous era before the invention of the internet, it was very difficult to know things about the IZIDI religion, but after the 2003 war in Iraq and the easy access to internet therafter, we saw that many IZIDI people are talking about there religion in websites....

What makes me sad ius that I just know today that the first wednesday of this month (april), is a holy happy day for them and they make many beautiful things this day including going in the early morning to the flowers and taking the drops of water in it to there faces, and at night they join together in the holy place to light on candles.... all this occur in my country and no media shed light on it... no body, but the IZIDIES, now that there is a holy happy day...

I hope in the future cameras can find its way there to shed light on this beautiful colour of my country....

the following are pictures from IZIDI holy places in north Iraq

suicide in iraq

In Iraq it is rare to find an epidemiologic study regarding many things, and it very rare to find a study about the mental health, I was surprised that no study was done to know the prevalence of suiside in iraq, but there was a study by dr. Simon A. Ovanessian named "An Approach for Description & A Clue for Prevention" made in 1993, as you can see it was a long complex title that still I can not fully understand, but what he says that he was looking for the suicide cases which reach the baghdad foreinsic institute during a year from Nov.1991 till Nov. 1992, and there was 60 case from Baghdad only... and if we know that there are about 5 million people living in baghdad at that time, and that all the cases of suicide must reach the baghdad foreinsic institute, the prevalence will be: 1.2/100,000.....

But what surprises me is that dr. Simon did not mention the prevalence rate, he only gave us numbers... why he did not make the prevalence rate frankly?

Baghdad foriensic institute

Well it is again one of the stories which am writing with difficulty and till now am not sure that I should write this or not. In spite of the sadness and despair this story got, it is true, incredebly true.... I could not find a picture to publish it with this:

Before one year from now, I went to the colledge of medecine in Baghdad to do some work there, what I noticed is that there is a smell of dead bodies! I did not ask anyone about that smell because I was affraid from the answer... But everybody was acting normally, many female students was in full make up and wearing sexy clothes, many male students were laughing strongly about some jokes they made.... so I decided to ask about the smell of the dead bodies... I had asked a police man, he told me with a strange look in his face: the smell come from the baghdad foreinsic institute..he seemed surprised that somebody asked him about that.... when I finished my job I went out fastly and did not want to know more till before one month....

Before on month a patient came to the psychiatric outpatient clinic in the hospital I work in, he was working in Baghdad foreinsic institute, and he was severely depressed with severe symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, he had quit his job, can not go out of his home easily, difficulty to sleep, many flashbacks, poor comcentration, his eyes were red and widely opened.....

I asked him about things he saw there, he told me things that I can not till now imagine that a human being can do it to another human.... he told me how they receive dead tortutured bodies, some of these bodies seemed tortured with a sense of pleasure or luster or i do not know what to call it...

I want tell you what he told me.... cause sometimes it is better not to know