Gaza Community Mental Health Program (GCMHP)

Grassroots International supports the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme as they provide mental health services to Gaza’s traumatized population. They place special emphasis on vulnerable groups such as children, women and victims of torture. GCMHP has carried out extensive therapy, training, and research since their establishment in 1990 in order to respond to mental health needs from the stress of occupation and violence. GCMHP’s crisis intervention works by following up with victims in homes, hospitals, and clinics and is critical to the community. They view their role as the nexus of treating stress management and defending human rights.

Three years ago today, on December 27, 2008, the Israeli Defense Force launched Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. The offensive left a trail of death and destruction in its wake, including hundreds dead, thousands displaced, and nearly the entire 1.5 million-person population traumatized and hungry. In the years since the bombing stopped and tanks rolled through agricultural fields, recovery has been slow.

At the rate the Separation Wall is being built, soon Palestinian Land Day (March 30) will need only a few hours. The Wall and the Israeli mandated buffer zones jut into the Palestinian territories by as much as 300 feet, gobbling up fertile agricultural land and precious water reserves, and make cool profits for companies like Elbit Systems Ltd. contracted to build the massive structure.

 Year before last, I was sitting in the living room of my childhood home sharing a cup of morning coffee with my mother and musing over the holidays. We laughed over kitschy Christmas gifts from well-meaning relatives before deciding to turn on the news for five minutes on the brink of another vacation day. Those five minutes would turn out to be one of those times like 9/11—when you never forget exactly where you were when you found out. "Oh no," gasped my mother, tears welling up immediately in her eyes. "Gaza Explodes..." scrolled across the bottom of the screen, and plumes of smoke hung on the living room wall in high definition.

Grassroots International joins our partners in Palestine and Israel – and indeed non-violent activists worldwide – in the condemnation of Israel’s attack on the Free Gaza flotilla bound for Gaza. When Israeli forces stormed a multinational humanitarian fleet on its way to Gaza – in international waters – to deliver medicines, medical equipment, building materials and food they also assaulted Nobel laureates, holocaust survivors and civilians from 40 nations.

Gaza:  War on civilians in the world's largest open-air prison[1]

With thanks in part to $80,000 dollars in generous donations made to Grassroots International in response to the Gaza Crisis, our partners in Palestine have begun the process of rebuilding their communities.   

For a Grassroots International staff member and Board member, this International Women's Day offered a real glimpse at global solidarity. The two women, along with 58 other activists, writers and thinkers stepped across the rarely penetrable border into Gaza. Delegates hope to meet with their counterparts, including a number of Grassroots International partners, visit to the urban gardens of the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC), and meet with the Gaza Community Mental Health Program (GCMHP), whose building was severely damaged during the Israeli attack.

Grassroots International's long time grantee, the Gaza Community Mental Health Program (GCMHP) has been hit by extensive shelling in the now weeklong military campaign against Gaza.  GCMHP provides mental health services, with special emphasis on vulnerable groups such as children, women and victims of trauma and human rights violations.  They are also the lead organization of the International Campaign to End the Siege of Gaza, which Grassroots International has supported in coordination with alies such as Jewish Voice for Peace and Global Exchange.

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Press Release

The Israeli shelling caused massive damage in GCMHP Headquarter in Gaza

Israel's siege on Gaza, now in its 19th month, has wreaked havoc on all aspects of life and significant attention has been paid in particular to the economic consequences of border closures and the blockade. However, an overlooked epidemic threatens the social and familial ties that bond the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. Living under a constant state of crisis in which their livelihoods have been denied, the people of Gaza's once exemplary resilience and determination are giving way to an unfathomable sea of depression and psychological illnesses.