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What is depression? What cultural elements in our Iranian way of living lead to depression?

Definition of depression:

Any unhappy thought, feeling, emotion, or memory of events due to the loss of loved ones, loss of jobs, traumatic events, and grief/sorrow, or for no reason at all, that lasts for more than two weeks.

The feeling of being down, not willing to interact with others, not having any hope or solution for problems, not feeling loved, unable to make one’s own choices, or not having the resources to change some horrible injustice, all in all are causing depression for Iranian people and Iranian culture. There are some specific cultural variables and they may change from person to person, community to community.

Now, let’s talk about 27 years of such feelings! Let’s explore centuries of feeling oppressed, suffocated, and collectively depressed! Let’s talk about all the emotional, physical, and psychological pain brought about by immigration and adjustment issues! Some of these are:

Physical disturbances: The loss of appetite, lack of sleep, chronic pain, and health concerns, fatigue, and embodied pain.

Emotional suffering: The feeling of not belonging, isolation, loss of family bonds, sadness, fear, anger, shame, guilt, too many emotions leading to tears and devastation.

Social devastation: an inability to succeed in the tasks of life because of mental health problems that are being hidden and kept secret, loss of concentration in work, school, peer relations, and family relations. Social suffering also includes avoiding others, neglecting responsibilities, lacking the power to change horrible life circumstances many times leading to violent family life, physical, emotional, psychological, and sexual abuse.

Psychological disturbances: underlying personality issues may

Impact/increase/decrease the feeling of depression

Our culturally most horrible mistakes in dealing with depressed person are:

Family involvement in one’s decision making or having no possibility to make one’s own decisions at all.

Collective family structures with no respect for personal space and no validation of personal contributions.

Hazards:

· Family could be fearful, feeling unsafe because the depressed person acts strongly,

· family may lack understanding for the sings and symptoms, family may neglect in supporting the person,

· family may reject the person as he/ she does not participate in the regular family relations,

· family may give too much advise to the person of what he/she should do,

· family may not letting the person rest and find proper help,

· family may without knowing stigmatize the depressed person, telling him/her that: “it is bad in our culture and if others know about this, the family’s reputation is damaged, so the person has to put his acts together and act normal.”

And the list goes on…

More to come in the future…

April 29, 2007

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Imagine…Just try to imagine…

WE Can Build If We Can Imagine…

Imagine a world and a Middle East in peace. A place where all people, regardless of religion, race, class, gender, or ethnicity had a chance to live their lives without any problem!

Just for a moment:

Picture Iran being a country where we have a huge wall of protection in place for our children, our women, our men, and even for our animals and for our enemies! By wall of protection I mean having laws in place, where nobody and I mean NOBODY, could violate others’ rights, and everyone’s rights are protected!   ESPECIALLY OUR CHILDREN.

Imagine, instead of focusing on having all people alike, we could respect all people being not alike!

Imagine, having an Iran with no “fight for this and that” ideology, an Iran where we could respect people’s choices for religion, whatever they may be!

Imagine, having a world and a Middle East where communities of people could have parades, carnivals, parties, and gatherings and without violence and hatred finding a place in that respectful atmosphere!

Just picture a Middle East and an Iran where human beings would be respected and valued as they are in the Western cultures! Are we not worth it?

Imagine our home country and our culture encouraging charity, hope, faith, and acceptance of different people and different cultures.

Imagine, an Iran to where Iranians from around the world can return. They could build schools and universities and hospitals based on the latest technologies of the world, and our children could speak all the languages they have learned. Iranians reside around the world and they are successful everywhere they go. Imagine the day they could freely move back to Iran and feel safe there, not fear any hatred or exclusion, and could build up a national platform again!

Imagine Iranians, us, practicing democracy by letting go of old labels and names and instead focusing on community building and creating hope.

We need hope more than anything else!

Imagine, a world where we value life instead of death!

Just imagine…

April 27, 2007

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What Do we know about Child Sexual Abuse?

What is sexual abuse?

How much do we care to know about and to understand the huge issue of child sexual abuse?

How is it that no one is taking responsibility for child victims of sexual abuse?

How is that we do not admit we have such problem?

How can we be blind to the pain of our children in Iran?

What is happening to our children and how can we prevent it from happening?

We have never in our entire history talked about child sexual abuse, or sexual abuse as a societal problem. This topic and any topic related to our bodies, especially our sexual bodies, is taboo (haram) to talk about! How come? The problem is bigger than this one single article can tackle. I am sure others have tried to open this topic, however, the problem and the reasons for this issue are very deep.

The main reason for why we are not talking about this issue is that we are shy and we are ashamed of discussing sexuality. Men in our society have their hands on our daughters and we do not dare to stand up for our girls!

You may say, “why men?” Well, who else?

There are few, if any, girls who have come forward to disclose this problem, and those that have, have been shut down or blamed for the abuse! In fact, in a country like Iran where the legal age for marriage varies from 9 years and above, how can we talk about sexual abuse? We are “legally” letting our girls be sexually abused, raped, and exploited by those men or “husbands.”

In a country like Iran, where the majority of women have no voice, where they are blamed for not giving enough service to their husbands, where they have to line up in the court rooms day in and day out to apply for divorce, where the judge, who is most probably a mullah, gives women the advice to “think twice” and go back to their husbands or lose their children, and where children are given to women for only a short time (girls up to age 7 and boys up to age 2), how could anyone be interested in dealing with sexual abuse as a problem?

What is child sexual abuse anyway?

Child sexual abuse is when a person responsible for a child, being the father, uncle, brother, grandfather, or whoever else, uses a child for sexual purposes.

An abuser is usually someone who is known to the child, someone who has power over the child, and someone who threatens the child if the child tries to speak up!

Abusers always put the blame on the child and they seek children who are not being cared for properly anyway.

Sexual abuse and sexual harassment occurs also when an adult lets a child touch the adult’s genitals, lets the child watch pornography in order to use the child for sexual purposes, or even when an adult uses sexual language all the time.

Children are the silent sufferers in our culture; no one cares for them and no one protects them, because basically our Iranian culture does not give many rights to our children anyway.

In Western cultures, there are walls of legal protection–not that sexual abuse isn’t happening–but at least families are being educated about the problems.

If you know of any child here in Canada or elsewhere that is being sexually abused, please do not close your eyes. Please help the child to find help. The least you can do is to acknowledge the child’s pain and let him/her know that IT IS NOT HIS/HER FAULT!

Please help to open this discussion. Maybe we can save some of those millions of children!

April 26, 2007

www.middlepeace.com