Building Community Around Mental Health Awareness in Dubai
A conversation with Alhanoof Assaf, founder of insightful.ae
Dear City Person,
I am enjoying the people I have so far been connecting with through this newsletter. One of these people is Alhanoof Assaf, founder of insightful.ae , who has been following me since I started the newsletter. Since I tend to feature a reader’s offerings in issues related to belonging once per month in my weekly posts, I thought to share an interview I had with her about her work with insightful.ae and the community that she has built around addressing mental health stigma in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE).
While insightful.ae is primarily focused on hosting talks lead by licensed mental health providers, I appreciated learning about how the attendees get inspired to share their personal stories and network with one another after each talk thereby helping them feel less alone in their experiences. This caught my attention because a common theme I see across the different people I have supported as a psychotherapist in Dubai is the lack of meaningful nonjudgmental social supports around stigmatized experiences. I will first share some observations I had about some of the factors that contribute to this before sharing my conversation with Alhanoof.
While millennials and generation Z are increasingly talking about these subjects in the UAE, we still have a long way to go for such conversations to happen with more of them and across other generational demographics. Even when such conversations are happening, I find that people often prefer talking about emotional wellness in generic terms rather than about more stigmatized subjects such as psychosis, suicidal thoughts, and sexual trauma which further contributes to isolation.
Ableism also plays a role in isolation as families often feel ashamed about having others see any physical or neurodevelopmental disability within their bloodline. This can limit opportunities for receiving meaningful social support for both those who directly experience said disabilities and their caregivers.
Another factor that can contribute to isolation around mental health is that some people may not always resonate with any of the mental health jargon that are imported from a Western cultural context so they may not see their experiences reflected in community awareness initiatives, support groups, or mental health services. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone who is suffering emotionally qualifies for a formal mental health diagnosis (a topic I wrote more about in this article that you can click here to access). It is further worth noting that the mental health field is still in its infancy and that the scientific validity of our current diagnostic system is questionable and constantly being reviewed which you can read more about by clicking here. This is not to downplay that, for some people, receiving a diagnosis can help them feel less alone in their experience and potentially access workplace and educational accommodations.
I notice that most psychoeducational spaces in UAE focus on mental health from a medical or individual wellbeing perspective without looking at how family dynamics, peer groups, workplace/educational environments, and societal, political, and economical factors can all impact one’s emotional health. This can have some people feel that their experiences in these areas are not being reflected in community outreach.
I hope that more initiatives, such as insightful.ae, can take these into account while at the same time I acknowledge the value they bring to the community. Middle Eastern, South Asian, Southeast Asian cultures who make up the majority demographics in UAE tend to shy away from talking about private emotional and family matters to strangers so formal support groups tend to have a low attendance. However, some prefer seeking out educational content online or through public talks especially when they are feeling ambivalent about mental health services or are unable to access such services even if they want to do so. There are many systemic and economic barriers that can impact such accessibility in the UAE but this is outside the scope of this post but I will mention them in future posts. All this partly contextualizes why insightful.ae is focused on talks by mental health providers rather than being a formal support group.
I appreciate the role that both community and self-care played in keeping Alhanoof going in her initiative despite pushback. It has me think about what are the elements needed to keep communities sustainable in the long-term and I would like to continue exploring this question in my newsletter.
If you are based in the UAE, I recommend you follow insightful.ae on Instagram by clicking here to stay up to date with events.
If you are not based in the UAE, I have a question for you that you can respond to by either replying to this email or commenting on Substack:
What are the things that you believe make building long-term community connections possible? Do share any experiences with community building or observations you have had of others involved in this area.
Some house keeping before I share my interview with Alhanoof…
Feel free to either reply to this email or comment on Substack app/website if you would like me to feature anything that you offer in the area of belonging, whether it is a blog/newsletter, videos, podcast, groups, events, research, resources, an organization you run, etc.
If you are new to my free weekly newsletter, Belonging Co-Lab, check out the About page linked here if you haven’t already and click here to see my previous posts. If you are viewing this from the Substack app and have not already subscribed, you may do so by clicking on the button below:
Briefly introduce yourself and insightful.ae. What does insightful.ae currently offer to the community?
My name is Alhanoof Assaf, resident of Dubai for over 20 years, I worked during and after I graduated university in various corporate jobs until I became a mother. Couple of years after that (last year) I started organizing events to create mental health awareness in my community and to try to end the stigma. insightful.ae currently offers in-person events in Dubai with expert speakers, licensed psychotherapists, psychologists and psychiatrists who are invited to share their experience and practical tips on different chosen topics around mental health. My work is for those experiencing emotional and mental afflictions and the people who care for them and is essentially to try to move people from a state of isolation and confusion towards community and curiosity and subsequently finding relief via licensed psychology and psychiatry speakers who ignite the sparks of insight and hope.
What inspired you to create insightful.ae?
It came through the realization that sometimes when people try to manage their emotional and mental health and that of their loved ones by distracting with activities or ignoring the mental and emotional status quo of self or of loved ones or relying on alternative ways other than seeking professional help from psychologists and psychiatrists in particular can have adverse outcomes for those who need them. Ideally I wish to try to make people accept getting the knowledge and help they need while feeling a sense of community.
What was challenging about your journey in creating it? What kept you going despite the challenges?
Challenges are breaking the stigma and receiving comments from people who either misunderstand or minimize my efforts. What keeps me going despite the challenges are countless elements and factors among which are my reflections on how what I do can be helpful and doing my prayers, affirmations, seeking guidance from professionals, and journaling where I remind myself in writing that the benefits outweigh the challenges. Also, the individuals who keep encouraging me with their actions and words whether it’s by attending the events, giving verbal face-to-face and/or written testimonials, reshares, posts, responding to surveys, and giving constructive feedback. I also have a number of loyal attendees who keep registering and providing support in any way they can. In addition, my past events’ speakers witnessed my passion and saw the level of sophistication of the attendees who engaged beautifully with them, hence we have multiple repeated speakers.
Tell me about a moment with insightful.ae that you feel so proud of. How come you picked this moment to share?
I’m proud of the people who gathered the courage not only to attend the mental health awareness events but who also chose to share from their experiences and I hope it’s because they felt that the space I try to create is free of judgment, respecting everyone’s journey and privacy where we all share the same hope for mental and emotional health.
Is there an upcoming event that you would like newsletter readers based in UAE to know about?
Upcoming event Thursday May 9th 10:30 am to 1:30 pm on the topic of Emotion Regulation, what it is, signs of emotion dysregulation, causes of emotion dysregulation, barriers to emotion regulation in addition to real life examples with guest expert speaker Dr. Jamilah Motala ClinPsyD (UK) - Licensed Clinical Psychologist at The Psychiatry and Therapy Centre, Dubai. The event will take place in Dubai Hills Mall.
Stay tuned for next week’s newsletter where I will discuss my ruminations about expert knowledge and the positive, negative, and mixed impacts that privileging it may have on communities. I will also pose questions on how the potentially negative impacts could be navigated.
Before I wrap up…
I am ending each of my posts with a randomly drawn conversational card that you can consider using to deepen your conversations with people this week. So here’s today’s card drawn from a deck called Scenario Cards:
“What if a new island has erupted from the sea and you are in charge of building a new country there? What sort of country would you build?”
Let me know if you end up using this question in any of your conversations and how it goes!
Click the link here to learn more about Scenario Cards. I currently earn an affiliate fee for every purchase from this link. This is so far the first affiliate partnership I have and I only plan to do so with products I genuinely benefited from. I had previously written a post about conversational cards in general prior to being invited to Scenario Cards’ affiliate program. Click here for the link to the post.