Inquiry into the mental health of women in the Arab regions is coming into its own. Serious academic attention finally is being paid to how women in these regions manage their considerable psychological strain.
The author has been at the vanguard of this analysis. For two decades, he has engaged in the treatment and study of Arab women. Already in the early 1990s, the author was combining his clinical skills and knowledge of local ways of being to create novel strategies for intervention with a highly resistant population: multi-unit Bedouin-Arab families in southern Israel. At the same time, the author was examining the mental health of Arab/Islamic women throughout the world.
The broader scientific community has begun to pay heed to this crucial inquiry. This book presents cutting-edge investigations on women’s mental health in the Arab regions, and how that health is intertwined with their physical well-being. Moreover, the new field of the social ecology of resilience offers promise for women’s treatment in this region. The author presents his tripartite ‘Wrap-Around Resilience’ program representing a fusion of his research findings and social ecology. Last, the author’s life-long commitment to blending traditional and bio-medical approaches has been taken up in full measure by thought-leaders of the medical world, culminating in a World Health Organization prioritization of traditional health strategies. Indeed, progress is being made.

Chapter 1: Arab Society
Chapter 2: The Arab World: General Characteristics
Chapter 3: Women’s Mental Health throughout the world
Chapter 4: Women’s Mental Health in the Middle East
Chapter 5: Somatization
Chapter 6: Idioms of Distress, Metaphors and Proverbs
Chapter 7: From Diviners to Diagnosticians: Al-Junun
Chapter 8: Women of Somatic Metaphor: Bedouin Arab Women of the Negev: Chapter 9
Discussion and Clinical Implications. Toward a Transcultural Treatment Synthesis: ‘Wrap-Around Resilience