May 6th, 2021 comments
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. With the ongoing pandemic, worrisome situations locally as well as in other countries where loved ones are suffering can be difficult for many. Mental well-being can be affected and needs to be monitored and looked after. Feeling anxious, sad, frustrated or suicidal can affect us in the short-term and long-term.
Knowing that you need help and learning where to get help is important for newcomers and immigrants. Traditional supports such as family, friends, religious/spiritual leaders in home countries may no longer be available having moved to a new country. In addition, barriers such as language, culture and preoccupation with immediate needs such as income, housing, jobs and schools could have come in the way of fostering new community connections, or finding out about resources available and seeking help.
Logo of Canary Mission, from its Facebook page
I was recently involved in the struggle of Hammam Farah, a young Canadian psychotherapist, to free himself from the damage to his reputation inflicted by the pro-Zionist organization Canary Mission an episode that provides a harrowing example of how Canary Mission’s relentless attacks on free speech threaten the future of professionals who speak out in defense of the rights of Palestinians. As is well known, the Canary Mission website features a long list of individual scholars, activists, professors, and others whose work opposes the Israeli political position a list infamous for name-calling, blacklisting, and distortions of fact. Farah’s experience demonstrates how an absence of an adequate awareness of the goals and methods of this website readily enables legitimate professional organizations to be taken in by its manipulations.