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Hurdles to Healing: The Struggle to Find a Therapist in Egypt

February 27, 2023

After her first experience with therapy in Egypt, Wesal Hammam, 28, nearly decided to abandon treatment altogether. “The experience was so traumatic that I neglected the whole idea of therapy for another two and a half years,” she says. She is not alone in this. The journey to finding a therapist in Egypt is often fraught with challenges — from financial barriers, to ethical breaches, and even mistreatment at the hands of unqualified professionals. These obstacles can deter a patient from seeking the help they need and, in some cases, cause them further psychological harm. Hammam first sought therapy in 2017, after experiencing a mental breakdown. Then an engineering student at Cairo University, she decided to seek help at Al Demerdash hospital. Though she had reservations about public sector facilities, Hammam says that reading a widely shared thread about the hospital’s mental health services on Twitter encouraged her to give it a try. She arrived in the early morning to find tension reigning over a crowded waiting room. “People had been waiting since 5 or 6 AM. There were children, teenagers, people from other governorates and from the countryside. […]…


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