“In terms of mental health, it was a desert here at the time. If anyone in Bnei Brak had a problem – and recognized it – they would travel as far away as they could [for treatment] so as not to be seen,” says the 50-year-old Bunzel. “To open up [a clinic] here was to go up straight in the face of the stigma. People predicted no one would show up.”
Ha'aretz reports:
BNEI BRAK – Standing tall in the center of this ultra-Orthodox city in central Israel, this state-of-the-art psychiatric facility, which is due to open within six months, has something to say: It states unequivocally that even here, in this most traditional society, attitudes toward those suffering from mental health problems are changing.
Eleven years ago, American-born Michael Bunzel sent up a trial balloon, as he calls it, when he took on the job of chief psychiatrist at the precursor of the new facility – a small clinic operating for now out of a few prefab structures, located behind the Mayanei Hayeshua Medical Center with which it is affiliated.
“In terms of mental health, it was a desert here at the time. If anyone in Bnei Brak had a problem – and recognized it – they would travel as far away as they could [for treatment] so as not to be seen,” says the 50-year-old Bunzel. “To open up [a clinic] here was to go up straight in the face of the stigma. People predicted no one would show up.”
But they did.
For most of the 20th century, the country's ultra-Orthodox treated professional care of mental health problems, and even the very existence of those problems, with suspicion, says Bunzel. The psychiatrist was born in Orange Country, California, studied at Stanford University, did his psychiatric residency at John Hopkins before immigrating to Israel – and is himself Orthodox.
The reasons for the aversion vary, but to begin with, explains Bunzel, this is a community that looks to its rabbis for help. Basing treatment on the wisdom of atheist personalities like Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, or other secular "fathers" in the field – makes people uncomfortable, to say the least.
But in the last two decades, with growing evidence that there are also clear biological underpinnings to mental illness, Israel's ultra-Orthodox, like the broader population, have became more open to treatment. “There has been something of a revolution,” says Bunzel. “The rabbis, and their communities, have gone from abhorring the field, to having high expectations of it.”
But still, stresses the psychiatrist, “I would say we have challenged the stigma – not broken it.”…
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