Xanax prescriptions were not the only thing my colleagues requested when they found out I was interviewing the famed psychiatrist (and professor of psychology) Ahmed Okasha. They asked for advice on how to stop obsessing over their children's safety, or for express appointments. They might have been smiling ironically but they were far from joking. For a year at least strips of tranquilisers have been placed side by side with the painkillers in our bags. After decades of stagnation, Egyptians had seen everything in just three years: two revolutions, two presidential elections, several constitutional referendums, and parliamentary elections to boot. All of which was accompanied by nearly daily bloody clashes, soaring crime and traffic accident rates, demonstrations, road blocks and above all terrorist attacks. Stories of how lucky X was to escape or survive a violent demonstration or a bombing on the way to work had become commonplace. As the first Arab and Muslim to serve as president of the World Psychiatric Association (a position he held from 2002 to 2005), the founder and honorary chair of the Institute of Psychiatry at Ain Shams University, where he serves as director of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Training and Research in Mental Health, president of the Egyptian Psychiatric Association and honorary president of the Arab Federation of Psychiatrists, Okasha is an authority if ever there was one. The recipient of the State Merit Prize of Medical Creativity from the Academy of Scientific Research in 2000 and the State Merit Prize of the Medical Sciences in 2008, he has written over 70 books in Arabic and English, and has published over 300 articles. One of his most recent studies, “The Anatomy of the Egyptian Character”, analyses the Egyptian persona. As such Okasha is no newcomer to the media. Since 2011 he has been a regular face on talk shows, where he discusses current events from a psychological perspective. At his elegant office in the psychiatric health resort he oversees in New Cairo, Okasha gave me a warm welcome and I threw the first question at him right away. Has Egypt become a depressed nation? Do the past three years mark a change in the national psyche of Egyptians, long known for their strong morals, endurance of hardship and sense of humour? Comfortably barricaded behind his oak desk, Okasha answered, first, with a comforting smile. “There is a difference between mental disorders and mental health,” he said swiftly, arguing that while the former are increasing at a normal rates, it is the latter that Egyptians should be worried about. A person who enjoys mental health is someone who is able to “cope with the pressures and stresses of life with resilience, and who manages anger and nervousness,” Okasha explained. He is also someone who is “able to give and work and love in a perfect way, someone whose expectations match his abilities, someone who feels that his country respects his individuality, integrity and free expression. I will leave it to you to judge whether or not Egyptians enjoy mental health.” Okasha maintained that it is lack of mental health as defined above that strikes in the form of depressive mood: a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness. The worst outcome of lack of mental health, however, is that it negatively affects morality. Referring to the findings of the 2014 UN Development Report, Okasha warned that morals and development in all Arab countries and specifically Egypt will never be attained until women are empowered, education systems are changed, and democracy is practised. “Unfortunately, we are lagging behind in all of these area,” he said. But how can the legacy of the Egyptians' strong morals collapse so fast? Okasha argued that, contrary to the popular thinking, morals are not inherited. They are dependent on the environment: “The absence of law, slow justice and the erosion of the sovereignty of the state all produce a lax society. A lax society produces lax morals.” Earlier this year, Okasha was appointed as an advisor in the presidential council of scientists and leaders. His mission is to encourage mental health and community harmony and cohesion in the country. According to Okasha, the only way to achieve community harmony is through building social capital, which consists of trust, care and love among citizens. On the other hand, to develop the moral character of the individual and thus achieve a collective conscience, a “scientific culture” must reign. This scientific culture consists of three aspects: self-directedness, which means honesty, bearing responsibility, discipline, competence and forgiveness. “Look at any job in Egypt and you will easily notice a lack of competence.” The second aspect is teamwork. Cooperation does not exist in Egypt, Okasha explained, and that is why we shall never win in football, though we can take the world championships in individual games such as squash, weight-lifting and karate. The third aspect is the self-transcendence, which is giving to others and to society and is the opposite of being self-centred. Okasha cited the 18-day revolution on 25 January 2011, an event organised by intellectual, educated middle-class people for the sake of Egypt's welfare, as the best example of the scientific culture: “During these 18 days, there was cooperation, self-directedness, forgiveness. We had the poor, the rich, the young, the old, the Copt, the Muslim: social capital was formed.” However, Okasha added, the Muslim Brotherhood hijacked the revolution after these 18 days and the goal changed from “the people demand the downfall of the regime” to “the people demand the downfall of the state”. But is the deterioration in Egyptian morality and the demolition of traditional social capital due to governments and regimes or to the citizens themselves? According to Okasha “it is a vicious circle” for which both parties are equally responsible. He added that the three main aspects recognised by the World Health Organisation that produce laxity (disinhibition) in morality are illiteracy, poverty and unemployment. “This triangle can change the character of the individual. It can produce aggression, violence, lax morals and mental disorders including addiction and other forms of antisocial behaviour. It is the government's responsibility to look at unemployment, poverty and illiteracy.” On the other hand, quoting Egyptian economist Mohamed Al-Erian (another member of the council), Okasha says the continuity of unemployment will produce unemployable people. “This is very true and in turn puts pressure on the budget of the country and affects community harmony, and the vicious circle goes on and on.” Out of all these issues, Okasha believes that the problems of illiteracy and the quality of education in Egypt are the most pressing. Egypt ranked 17th in literacy rates in the Arab world with only 73.9 per cent of the population who are literate. “This is very sad and what makes things worse is that illiteracy among females is as high as 40 per cent,” he said. What is alarming about this is that our conscience has stages. “The first stage is the home. If you have educated parents then your morals are higher. So with 40 per cent of the mothers being illiterate and 99 per cent of them not having the means to send their children to kindergarten, the children take all their conscience stimuli from this illiterate role model, who will lie and manipulate others in order to survive.” But even when children go to school, Okasha lamented the fact that many teachers now fail to set a good example, resulting in even worse moral laxity. “All this produces a citizen who lacks self-directedness and who can easily deal with society with dishonesty and deceit,” he concluded. Okasha also expressed the wish to see the whole system of education in Egypt changed. He said that the majority of students graduate lacking the social skills. One important reform that Okasha hopes to see is the debunking of the prevalent idea in Egyptian education that providing extra hours and extra information to students is always for the better. “There is something called a neural network in the brain. One can't have continuous attention for more than 50-60 minutes. A break is always needed for the benefit of the brain cells,” he explains. It is therefore important to give more time to music and sports. “It has been proved that if you give only five hours of teaching and you give music and sports another two hours then the assimilation of knowledge in the children will be much better. We need to apply this in our schools. Music can increase the number neurons in the brain. It is the food of the spirit and mind.” The present, difficult phase through which Egypt is going is often compared with that following the 1967 defeat. Many are wondering how to pass it safely in the same way as the older generation wondered how to pass the aftermath of that war. For Okasha, back in 1967, it was the mass media that undertook the greater part of the rehabilitation process: “There was a mobilisation of the mass media to raise the morale of the people. The patriotic songs by legends such as Um Kulthoum and Abdel-Halim Hafez were aired all day. Even amid the helplessness, hopelessness and immigration of many Egyptians to the Gulf states, the songs still motivated people.” Okasha lashed out at the present-day media, by contrast, for not recognising the crucial time that Egypt is going through. “There must be awareness in the mass media that we are at war in this phase and that we need the harmony of the community and we need to develop our conscience and morals so that we can progress.” Morals are not forged in the home, at school or anywhere in society as much as they are through mass media, especially TV; this is especially true of people in developing countries who do not have any other means of entertainment. One of the curses of the globalisation and IT is that all children can look at violence, rape and killing, and they become gradually desensitised to seeing blood and at the same time, if they practise such violence, they will have less remorse — that is how US children come to shoot their classmates. Okasha is happy, however, that programmes like Supernanny are being aired in Arabic on TV. “Imagine how many people will benefit, learning how to raise their children and solve their problems?” Okasha laments the fact that the media does not present role models, with the majority of serials presented in Ramadan dealing with “prostitution, addiction and murder”. According to the psychiatrist, “we need to have role models. Can you imagine, we don't have a single female role model in thousands of TV serials in Egypt.” Okasha also critcised the media for focussing on sensational news and ignoring achievements that would raise the morale of citizens. He cited the focus of Egyptian media on news about the sexual offences of Salafi Nour Party members and ignoring the four Egyptians who were part of the team of the Rosetta mission which landed on a comet. “The approach of the mass media must change in the next five to ten years to empower education, aesthetic values, examples and role models,” Okasha says. “That is the only way to cross this phase.” While the past three years were marred by political and social conflicts, the most devastating was the sharp polarisation that hit society: “remnants” against “revolutionaries”, young against old, Islamists against liberals, pro-army against pro-Muslim Brotherhood. Okasha agrees that polarisation in society is so severe that it has caused divisions within families and the collapse of many marriages, depriving the community of much of its harmony. However, he believes that it is equally healthy “because people started contemplating in a different way how to implement democracy and free expression.” Okasha blames “the non-existence of the culture of dialogue” for such problems. “What we have in Egypt is a culture of monologue. Democracy is about accepting the views of others. We have not learned this yet.” As to the ongoing debate on whether “to communicate or not to communicate” with the Muslim Brotherhood, Okasha sides with dialogue with those who did not resort to violence. “I say there should be no dialogue with those who murdered and sought to burn Egypt but there is another group that did not take part in this and we have to approach them. Okasha is also looking forward to the point when the phenomenon of extremism is eradicated. He believes that Al-Azhar, which according to him has been penetrated by extremists, has a major role to play. “Al-Azhar has to change its religious discourse and spread the moderate beliefs of Islam in the face of extremist beliefs.” Okasha went on to explain that people should be aware that there is no such thing as Islamic fundamentalism. “There are fundamentalist people who can be Christians, Muslims, Nazis or Fascists. All extremists adopt only one belief and refuse to argue with others,” he said. Okasha believes that fundamentalists in Egypt should not be imprisoned, as long as they are not convicted of crimes. They should rather be exposed to “sensory inputs” that would widen their thoughts and ideologies. Okasha explained that these people have been brainwashed since the age of five and thus “if we are to have the political and religious delusions of the Islamic groups changed we have to open up the closed neuron circuits that make them one-track minded, convincing them that their ultimate aim is to be a martyr and go to heaven.” Having said all that, Okasha is optimistic about the future. He believes that despite the negative signs Egyptians will learn to practise democracy and understand that it is about accepting the views of others. “We did not learn this yet in Egypt. We are in KG democracy. When a child starts to walk he falls and injures himself but he manages to stand up again. We are at this stage, making a lot of mistakes and failing to differentiate between democracy and chaos. But we will learn from our mistakes and we will make it.” It is after all the young who staged both 25 January and 30 June, and the young will rule one day. The young, Okasha says, had been deprived of political participation so they did not have the political experience or the kind of agenda that would enable them to rule after the revolution, “and that's why the revolution was hijacked”. But Okasha believes they will soon be learning. “These young people will rule but we need self-directedness, teamwork and self transcendence. If we start working on these principles with an aware mass media and inspiring role models,” he says, “we will have the luck to get through this phase.”
