I have to highlight how important it is that Michael Nabil is not a suspect in a violent crime. The military courts are trying him over a blog post that criticises the army, not killing or stabbing anyone.

Michael has passed the 50 days mark in his hunger strike.

He was referred to a mental hospital for observation for 45 days when his court appointed lawyers defended him saying that he is suffering from mental problems.

This is outrageous because:

1. It politicises psychiatry,
2. He isn't a suspect in a violent crime,
3. Are we heading towards a society where someone who disagrees with the ruling class is stripped of his freedom and his mental/psychiatric conditions 'checked'?
4. The hospital may get itself involved in involuntarily breaking his hunger strike.

The Abbaseya mental Hospital should have refused taking Michael Nabil in.

Without delving into the conditions of his stay inside the criminal suspects wards. This is abuse by the military court, which the Hospital has just become a partner in.

Today the media department of the General Secretariat of Mental Health released the following statement. Here is a snippet.

Former head of the World Psychiatric Association professor Ahmed Okasha said today on OTV live that he doesn't have an exact diagnosis for Gadafi as he never examined him but says he should be treated involuntarily for being dangerous on others.

Said his last speeches showed thought disturbance, delusions of persecution 'the uprising being a plot by Osama Bin Laden' and other delusions like people of Libya are rats and all of them receive hallucinogens.

He added that the delusions are fixed and that Gadafi is insightless.

Yosri Fouda showed him an image Mubarak near the end of the program, which when he zoomed in on the stripes of the suit showed the stripes made of tiny letters spelling the name HOSNY MUBARAK vertically, Okasha responded immediately with criticism of large egos and that's evidence of narcissism. Trouble is, he recently renamed the Ain Shams institute of psychiatry to the Okasha institute of psychiatry.

Unfortunately, the program added very little information or insight to people of Libya or families of Egyptians living there. It was purely entertaining. Mentioned nothing regarding the trauma that Libyans will be suffering from due Gadafi's bloody war against his own people.

UPDATE Wed. Dec 29, 2010:The Supreme Council for Antiquities announced today that building housing the Abbaseyya Psychiatric Hospital will be listed as an Islamic heritage site.

UPDATE Mon. Apr 18, 2010:
The designs changed on Zaha's website to include the hospital. Thanks to Luiz for the tip.

Original post:

Award winning Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid will help the Egyptian government destroy Egypt's largest mental health hospital, the Abassia hospital situated in the middle of Cairo, to build something called Cairo Expo City.

Opened in 1883, after a fire consumed a number of royal palaces except for one that was painted yellow and named the Yellow Palace (el-Saray el-Safra) it became Egypt's first modern hospital for the mentally ill.

Now it's in an area of 28 hectares and has around 3000 beds, offers almost all major psychiatric sub-specialities and an outpatient and emergency psychiatry services. The hospital serves around 60,000 patients each year.

In the 19th century, with the development of railway transportation, train accidents became a frequent source of death and serious injury.

Some of the victims claimed injury following an accident without a visible pathology. Jon Eric Erichsen, a British surgeon, in 1867 published a book called On Railway and Other Injuries of the Nervous System in it he argued that an unseen physical injury to the spine and brain caused the condition `railway spine.'

Railway spine was a concept that rooted the illness to the body and not the mind thus making it more legitimate and avoided stigma of mental illness.

Later, work by Jean-Martin Charcot, Piere Janet and Freud established the idea that overwhelming events can cause mental disorders.

Before WWI the terms “soldiers’heart,” “war neuroses” and “general nervous shock” were used to refer to the psychological casualties of combat. During WWI the term “shell shock” became widely accepted as it avoided the term hysteria. During World War II the U.S. military used the term “operational fatigue” or more often “combat fatigue.”

The hypothetical column on the left is meant to show that as a result of the stigma of mental illness, most people think that mental illnesses are always severe.

Delirium is a totally reversible state, people with dementia need long term care and can never be more harmless. Lots of people recover from psychosis totally and some retain symptoms.

Only 10% of violent crime in a society is from people with Schizophrenia.

كتب بلال فضل في المصري اليوم يوم 12/10/2009 عن طبيبة سورية تعالج التوحد بعلاج غذائي مُعين و ينتقد وزارة الصحة المصرية في عدم توفير هذا العلاج للمرضى المصريين و عدم توفير تحليل للكشف المبكر للمرض.

الطبيبة أسمها هيفاء الكيالى و مكتوب على موقعها أنها حصلت على ماجستير الكيمياء الحيوية و خبيرة بالعلاج بلأعشاب و عضوة جمعية المخترعين السوريين و " لها عدة لقاءات في الصحف والمجلات ولها العديد من المقابلات التلفزيونية".

التوحد من الأمراض النفسية الشديدة التي تصيب الأطفال و تعوق نمو الأعصاب الدماغية الخاصة بالتواصل مع الأخرين. و يشخص في السنين الأولى من العمر. و الحقيقة أنه تعددت النظريات حول المرض و أتهمت أشياء كثيرة بأنها تسبب للمرض مثل العوامل البيئية و الغذاء و المواد التي يتعرض لهل الحوامل في الأسابيع الأولى من الحمل. و الأرجح أن المرض سببة طفرة جينية في عدد كبير من الجينات (مثل أغلب الأمراض النفسية).

في الولايات المتحدة والمملكة المتحدة و بعض الدول الأخرى قامت حملة شرسة من أولياء الأمور و أطباء الطب البديل و الإعلام يإتهام تطعيم الحصبة (الثلاثي) بأنة السبب. و لا أعلم كيف أنتشرت تلك المعلومة و لكنها كانت قوية لدرجة أن تطعيم أحد أطفال توني بلير كان خبر هام جدا و للأسف زادت أعداد الأصابة بالحصبة. و نشرت دراسة ممتازة في الدورية المفتوحة بلوس وان تؤكد أن تطعيم الحصبة لا يزيد من فرص حدوث التوحد.

التوحد ليس له علاج و العلاجات السلوكية و الدوائية كلها للأعراض الثانوية للمرض و تحسين جودة الحياة.

ولا يوجد تحليل للمرض حتى الآن و كلها مازلت أبحاث أولية جدا تحوال إيجاد علاقة بين مواد في الجسم مختلفة و إن كانت تعطي مؤشر عن وجود المرض أم لا.

و للأسف تظهر العلاجات البديلة لتعطي أمل كاذب لأولياء الأمور. فظهر علاج يمنع الأطفال من تناول الجلوتن (بروتين في القمح و الشعير) و الكازيين(بروتين الألبان).