Topic: Expanding Mental Health Resources
Country: Syria
Delegate Name: Kayla Fleishans
School: Royal Oak High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Syria position papers GLIMUN 2018 committees
Syria, like many other countries, currently is lacking adequate mental healthcare. Unlike most countries, we are currently engaged in a prolonged and difficult war. The war not only has made access to care more limited for our citizens, but has increased the prevalence of mental illness within our population. Even before the war started, we only had two public psychiatric hospitals. Today we have only facility that provides mental health care.
We need to come together to figure out how we can better the access to receiving mental health care. At our high, Syria had as many as one hundred psychiatrists serving a population of twenty-one million people. How can we increase the supply of psychiatrists? In developed nations, they too do not have enough providers of mental health care for their own populations. We also need to increase the access to care. In Syria’s case, we have many physical problems in terms of access. The conflict has made and currently makes travel to facilities that supply the desperately needed treatment extremely difficult. That is also the case for people across the globe who live in rural areas that are not well served by any sort of health care provider. The ability to pay also increases the access to care because while we would like our citizens who are suffering to receive as much care as they can, it is known that the wealthier individuals are at an advantage to the poorer portions of our population.
In Syria, mental health is stigmatized in many areas. We do have people that are suffering, but rather than their illness manifesting itself in mental symptoms, it presents itself physically. When those people get treatment for what they think are physical ailments, nothing is done about the underlying cause. People need to be able to understand what mental illnesses are, often chemical imbalances that can be helped with medication and counseling, but while still respecting the cultures that they practice and live in.
As the committee seeks to create a resolution, every member needs to seek what they individually need for to it satisfy their own interests. Syria wishes an adequate resolution to include a way for the population of properly trained psychiatrists to increase, without putting a financial burden on the nation in which they will practice. A resolution should also include a way to increase understanding of mental illness without harming the cultural practices and beliefs of the people who need help and their families. We also need to focus on how we can make access easier without putting people in more physical, mental, or financial distress than they are currently in.
Syria greatly looks forward to seeing the other members in committee and focusing on debating this extremely important issue. We will do our best to ensure that every member’s needs are met in a resolution. We know that we will be accomplishing some greatly needed work on a topic that needs more attention than it has previously been assigned. We will be working with as many other nations as possible to make sure that we can increase access to care, care providers, and education to the many people who need it.
