In the fractured landscape of northern Syria, where the echoes of war have never fully faded, another crisis is unfolding—one less visible, but no less devastating. Years of conflict, displacement, and economic collapse have left millions not only physically scarred but psychologically broken. Now, as funding for humanitarian and health services runs dry, the country faces what many describe as an epidemic of despair.
When the mind becomes a battlefield
For over a decade, Syria has endured relentless violence and instability. Bombed cities, fractured families, and a generation raised amid ruins have created what psychiatrists call a “collective trauma.” The devastating earthquakes of 2023—killing more than 55,000 people in Syria and Turkey—deepened that trauma, leaving survivors to grieve yet again amid the rubble.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and local mental health workers report a sharp rise in suicides and suicide attempts across the country. In northwest Syria alone, suicide cases have risen 14% since last year. “The pain is silent,” says Dr. Ayham Khattab, a psychiatrist with MSF. “But it is everywhere.”
For those like Amer, a 41-year-old former prisoner of the Syrian regime, the scars are both physical and psychological.
“I was tortured for three years,” he recalls quietly. “Beatings, burning, hanging… After my release, I couldn’t face the world. I isolated myself. Even my dreams were filled with screams.”
The lost generation of Idlib
In the displacement camps outside Idlib, 23-year-old Dalal lives with a different kind of imprisonment. Once a hopeful student, her life changed when a missile landed near her home.
“I became a victim twice,” she says. “First of war, and then of my own mind.”
Dalal’s severe depression leaves her withdrawn and haunted by the sounds of explosions that once filled her childhood.
Children, too, bear invisible wounds. Eight-year-old M.S. lost her entire family in the 2023 earthquake. Her aunt says the little girl still wakes screaming in the night. “She suffers from panic attacks and doesn’t speak much anymore,” she says. “The doctor says it’s post-traumatic stress disorder. But where can we find proper treatment here?”
A health system on the brink
The World Health Organization estimates that nearly one million people in northwest Syria suffer from some form of mental health disorder. Yet the region—home to 4.5 million—has just four functioning facilities offering psychiatric care, and only two psychiatrists.
“Mental health was always the neglected child of the healthcare system,” explains Baraa Al-Juma of the White Helmets’ Mental Wellness Unit. “Now, with donor fatigue and shrinking budgets, it risks disappearing altogether.”
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), only a quarter of the US$4.1 billion required to sustain humanitarian operations in Syria this year has been received. Mental health care is among the first to be cut.
“We’re not only losing clinics,” warns Thomas Balivet, MSF’s head of mission in northwest Syria. “We’re losing hope. People need more than medicine—they need a chance to heal.”
Stigma and silence
Even when help exists, social stigma often prevents Syrians from seeking it. “Many still believe depression or anxiety is a sign of weakness, or even a punishment,” says Dr. Khattab. “We spend as much time educating communities as we do treating patients.”
MSF’s mental health teams have introduced group sessions and community awareness campaigns to normalize conversations around mental illness. These small interventions—story circles, art therapy for children, and counseling sessions for displaced women—are helping to chip away at a culture of silence that has persisted for generations.
The way forward: healing the invisible wounds
While the immediate future looks uncertain, mental health specialists across the region emphasize that early intervention, consistent funding, and community-based approaches are key to preventing further deterioration.
Al-Juma believes that rebuilding Syria’s future begins not with bricks and mortar, but with mental resilience.
“You cannot rebuild a country when its people are broken inside,” he says. “Healing the mind is the foundation of healing the nation.”
The crisis in Syria is not isolated. From Gaza to Yemen, millions in the Middle East live with untreated trauma, often unseen by the world. Yet, as one MSF volunteer put it, “every act of care—every counseling session, every conversation—plants a seed of recovery.”
For the people of Syria, those seeds may one day grow into the peace they’ve long been denied.