A Kuwaiti woman in Dubai is on a mission to remove the stigma around mental health issues in the Arab world.
Latifah Al Essa, who is a cognitive psychologist with a career spanning over a decade, has founded a platform called Ayadi (which means helping hands in Arabic) to help people in need of mental healthcare in the region.
“Our vision is to tackle and eliminate the mental health stigma in the Arab world,” Latifah told Gulf News.
“Mental health is a widespread concern in our region, and a highly stigmatised topic that is inadequately discussed and addressed. Within the GCC alone, approximately 15 per cent of the population is believed to suffer from mental health problems at any given time, and the numbers continue to increase. This is a conservative figure considering the stigma surrounding the topic and the difficulties people face when opening up about mental health.”
