Mental Health a Major Priority in Reconstruction of Iraq's Health System

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When outgoing interim Iraqi Health Minister, Dr Khudair Abbas, embarked on the reconstruction of Iraq's collapsed health system last summer, he was shocked to find that there were only two psychiatric hospitals for a country of 24 million people.

According to Abbas, patients with mental health problems had been kept under prison-like conditions and many escaped when their institutions were looted and vandalized last year. Inhumane treatment of patients was symptomatic of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship which tortured and murdered thousands of citizens, said Abbas.

"[It is] not only the trauma of the past. We have to address the effect of the current conflict on the people," said Dr R. Srinivasa Murthy from …