Over the last forty years, Iraq has suffered four major conflicts, a 13-year embargo and several civil wars. The psychological consequences of this instability are ravaging Iraqi society, but people suffering from mental illness remain highly stigmatised. And the health response is neither adequate nor sufficient.

Six months before consulting a private psychiatric clinic in Baghdad, 32-year-old Fatima had no clue that she was suffering from severe depression and a combination of other mental disorders. From being the subject of the bullying of her own family members and society, to the harrowing experience of being yelled at, beaten, and scorched during a ‘Sheikh’s’ attempt to ‘exorcise the devil’ from her body, and even through her experience of enduring her father’s threats to dump her at the ‘Shammaeyeh’ if she fails to ‘come to her senses’, Fatima had suffered immensely in every phase of her arduous journey to treatment.a