Shrouded in Darkness

A long piece in the Washington Post on the problem of mental illness in Iraq and the role of music and poetry to stem the tide:

"Even as a pullback of American troops marks a winding down of the war, more and more Iraqis are seeking medical treatment for trauma-induced mental illnesses, and the medical community is unable to keep up."

"Across Iraq, 100 psychiatrists are available to serve a population of about 30 million people, Iraq's psychiatric association says. Many people self-medicate, and prescription drug abuse is now the number one substance abuse problem in Iraq. The most abused drug is called Artane, known generically as trihexyphenidyl but referred to in Iraq as the "pill of courage," with a marked sedative effect."

"At a long work table, Humaidi gathered the men and women to sing and to recite poetry. The songs often circled back to grief, abandonment and fear."

Dhia Hardan, 38, suffers from manic depression. He comes to the hospital for very short stays to play music for the patients and collect his medication. He hears the whispers in the streets about his illness. He sees the looks of passersby worried they could catch what he suffers from, as many people here believe."Hardan was always prone to depression, but his music helped. When the sadness comes, the Shiite Muslim pulls out his ornately carved oud, a pear-shaped string instrument, and pours his grief into his songs. But after the U.S. invasion, the civil war and the militant sectarianism that followed, he stopped talking to people and he rarely left his home, the art teacher said. The Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia that enforces a prohibition on music, controlled the streets of his poor Shiite neighborhood. Hardan worried he would be killed or reprimanded for his music, as so many others were. He put away the instrument, the only thing that understands him, he said. To this day, despite the drop in violence, the only places he plays are at the hospital and in his living room with a fellow artist. "I feel the whole universe is shrouded in darkness, without hope, without life. I even hate to walk out the door," he said."