Dr. Samah Jabr is a leading Palestinian psychiatrist, psychotherapist, writer, and public intellectual from Jerusalem. One of the first female psychiatrists in Palestine, she is one of only 34 trained psychiatrists managing the health of millions of Palestinians who live under conditions of occupation and extreme violence. She is former head of the Mental Health Unit at the Palestinian Ministry of Health, and she explores the psychological dimensions of life under occupation as a lived reality. She has dedicated her life to serving Palestinians, with a focus on treating individuals who are suffering from trauma and trauma-related stress—particularly those relating to chronic political violence, displacement, and imprisonment. Jabr writes books, gives lectures, and trains others about mental health. She continues to work as a psychiatrist throughout Palestine today.
Born in Jerusalem
Samah Jabr was born on August 8, 1976, in Jerusalem. Her father, Dr. Ahmad Fahim Jabr, worked in the field of educational psychology, teaching at both Najah University and Al-Quds University. Their family home was filled with psychology books, and she became familiar with the field of psychology at a young age.1
Growing up in Palestine, Jabr frequently witnessed events such as political tension, Israeli military occupation, restrictions on movement, and the broader instability affecting Palestinian society. These experiences were not abstract political realities but part of her everyday life from a young age.
“I was born into a culture, a history, a tradition, and a people. I was also exposed to the many traumas my family and community at large have experienced. Each of these factors has shaped my path,”2 she says.
Samah Jabr as a young girl
Credit:
Al Jazeera
Jabr still clearly remembers Israel’s routine mistreatment from her childhood, including seeing her parents undergoing an inspection at an Israeli institution. “They were being handled like they were thieves. Embarrassed, but lacking any political power, they could not protest or put an end to the injustice,”3 she describes. “The system of Israeli checkpoints was established when I was a teenager, and since that time, invasive body searches and interrogations of Palestinians have become the rule,” she adds.4
Jabr’s childhood in East Jerusalem, shaped by the realities of life under Israeli occupation, profoundly influenced her future path as a psychiatrist and public intellectual. The visible psychological strain on her community gave her an early understanding of how conflict affects mental health. She says:
As a Palestinian Jerusalemite, I reside without citizenship in the city of my parents and grandparents. My status as a permanent resident can be revoked easily, and for myriad reasons. A series of laws and regulations regarding marriage, construction, home demolition, and more have been designed to suffocate the Palestinian presence in Jerusalem. They are harshly applied to me and my family, but not to the Jewish Jerusalemites who occupy my land. My Israeli travel document, a so-called “laissez passer,” refers to me as a person without an identity. This, too, is designed to make an alien out of me, even as I travel outside my occupied homeland.5
In her laissez-passer travel document, Samah Jabr’s nationality is listed as “undefined.”
Credit:
Al Jazeera
At the same time, despite all these hardships, Jabr maintained strong ties to family life and cultural traditions, including time spent in rural areas and among extended relatives. This combination of hardships and rootedness contributed to her later emphasis on resilience and collective identity. These experiences motivated her to study psychiatry and focus on the connection between political conditions and psychological well-being. As a result, her work emphasizes collective trauma, resilience, and the ethical role of mental health professionals in situations of ongoing conflict.
Education and Medical Training
Jabr completed her primary medical education in Palestine, earning a doctor of medicine degree from Al-Quds University. This foundational training provided her with a general medical qualification, after which she pursued a specialization in psychiatry.
Following her medical degree, she completed postgraduate clinical training in psychiatry. This training took place across several countries, which broadened her clinical and academic perspective. Additionally, she pursued advanced training in psychiatry in France and the United Kingdom and later undertook clinical research training in the United States. She also trained in psychotherapy at the Israel Psychoanalytic Institute.6
Her residency training took place at hospitals in and around Jerusalem, where psychiatric training programs serve both Palestinian and Israeli populations. She also trained in hospitals in the cities of Bethlehem and Ramallah.7 This stage of her education involved structured clinical rotations in adult psychiatry, emergency psychiatry, and psychotherapy, as well as supervised clinical practice in diagnosing and treating severe mental health conditions.
After completing her residency training, Jabr qualified as a psychiatrist and became board-certified in psychiatry within the Palestinian medical system. Her specialization includes general adult psychiatry and psychotherapy, with a strong focus on trauma-related mental health conditions—particularly those arising from chronic political violence, displacement, and imprisonment.
In 2015, she completed the Global Clinical Scholars Research Training program at Harvard Medical School, where she received advanced instruction in clinical research design and methodology.
In addition to her core psychiatric qualification, she has developed expertise in integrative psychotherapy approaches, including narrative and trauma-informed frameworks.8 These approaches are frequently reflected in both her clinical practice and her academic and public writing.
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Career
Jabr’s career combines clinical psychiatry, public mental health leadership, teaching, and international consultancy, with a consistent focus on the psychological impact of political conflict.
Jabr’s formal medical career began after she graduated in 2001 from the first cohort of the School of Medicine at Al-Quds University. The early period following her graduation established Jabr as one of the few practicing psychiatrists in Palestine at the time, and among the first Palestinian women to enter the field. As it turned out, Jabr’s career filled a gap in the medical field.
When I chose to specialize in psychiatry, a friendly colleague drew a cartoon of “Dr Samah Jabr’s Clinic.” The picture showed a spiderweb on the office door, implying that no one would ever come through it for psychiatric help. He was so wrong! When I started practicing, I was surprised by the spectrum of clinical problems that people brought, often medical complaints for which doctors could find no cause. People also came for help with mood changes that affected relationships and functioning, while others sought help with bizarre, disorganized behavior, for which traditional healers had found no explanation or treatment.9
To this end, Jabr herself often emphasizes the lived experience of patients in conflict-affected regions and the ethical responsibilities of mental health professionals working under conditions of structural violence. She frequently engages with multidisciplinary audiences, including psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and public health professionals.
In addition to her institutional role, Jabr has contributed to psychiatric education through collaboration with academic institutions, including training medical students and psychiatry trainees. While she is not primarily known for holding a long-term traditional university professorship, she has been involved in guest lecturing, seminars, and training workshops, particularly in collaboration with medical education programs such as those connected to Al-Quds University and other regional training institutions. Beyond Palestine, Jabr has participated in international teaching and knowledge exchange programs. She has been invited to speak at conferences, universities, and professional forums focused on global mental health, psychiatry in humanitarian settings, and trauma-informed care.
Samah Jabr holds a training workshop titled “Decolonial Mental Health Practice: Clinical and Ethical Insights from Palestine” for the master’s program at ARP Studio in Milan, Italy, April 2026.
Credit:
Samah Jabr Website
Her teaching in these contexts typically focuses on topics such as trauma psychiatry, cultural psychiatry, ethical challenges in conflict zones, and the psychological effects of collective political violence. She is known for integrating clinical psychiatry with broader psychosocial and human rights perspectives, encouraging students to understand mental illness not only as an individual condition but also as one that is shaped by social and political environments.
A major stage in her career was her long-standing role within the Palestinian public health system. From 2016 until 2025, she served as head of the Mental Health Unit at the Palestinian Ministry of Health, a position through which she helped develop and coordinate mental health policy and services. Jabr contributed to expanding access to psychiatric care, training local professionals, and integrating mental health services into primary health-care settings in Palestine.
Alongside her institutional leadership, Jabr has maintained an active clinical practice as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, working with patients struggling from trauma, violence, and chronic stress in both public and private settings, including in and around Jerusalem and the West Bank. Her clinical work is closely tied to her broader view that mental health cannot be separated from social and political conditions.
Samah Jabr discusses the connection between dementia and displacement in an interview for Okta Film, 2025.
Credit:
Courtesy of Samah Jabr
In addition to her clinical and administrative roles, Jabr has contributed to programs with agencies such as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime,10 Médecins Sans Frontières, and Save the Children.11 In these roles, she has provided expertise on trauma, torture recovery, and community mental health in conflict-impacted settings.
Over time, Jabr has also become an established public intellectual and writer, publishing essays and books that explore psychiatry, trauma, and human rights. While this dimension of her career extends beyond formal job titles, it has become a significant part of her professional identity, shaping how her clinical and policy work is understood internationally.
Advocacy
In addition to her clinical work, Jabr has dedicated over two decades to advocating on behalf of the Palestinian people’s mental health care, focusing on victims of torture and trauma. A central pillar of her advocacy is her insistence that mental health must be understood within its political context. She has consistently argued that distress among Palestinians is not merely the result of individual pathology but is rather deeply rooted in the conditions of occupation, including violence, restriction of movement, and systemic insecurity.12 In this sense, Jabr reframes mental illness as, at least in part, a rational response to abnormal circumstances. By doing so, Jabr critiques dominant Western psychiatric models that tend to individualize suffering and detach it from broader sociopolitical causes. Her approach calls for a more holistic understanding of mental health—one that accounts for power, inequality, and lived reality.
Closely linked to this is her advocacy for a human rights–based approach to psychiatry. Jabr argues that mental health professionals have an ethical responsibility not only to treat patients but also to confront the injustices that contribute to their suffering. In her view, neutrality in the face of oppression is itself a political stance, and one that risks perpetuating harm. She has therefore called on clinicians and institutions worldwide to show solidarity with populations living under occupation and to incorporate principles of justice and dignity into their practice.13
Samah Jabr stands in front of graffiti showing Gaza’s support for the residents of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, 2022.
Credit:
Middle East Monitor
This perspective expands psychiatry’s role beyond the clinic, positioning it as a field that must engage with legal, ethical, and political questions. Jabr explains:
Outside my clinic, I am always confronted with questions of safety regarding my public speaking: “Don’t you worry about going to prison, or fear that other harms will come to you because you’re speaking up and writing?” Those with less good intentions might say, “But isn’t the very fact that you are here and able to speak itself evidence that Israel is a real democracy?” I talk, not only to be a coherent person, both inside and outside my professional role, but because I cannot do otherwise. I cannot pretend I do not know; I cannot deny my feelings about the political reality; I cannot turn my face the other way. I speak to protest violence and to attempt to engage in a genuine critical dialogue with the other. This is the best that I can do in the face of an oppressive reality. Expressing my thoughts is the heartbeat of my humanity. This is the most basic right, without which no other human rights can be established.14
Another significant dimension of Jabr’s advocacy is her effort to decolonize mental health frameworks. Influenced by thinkers such as Frantz Fanon, she critiques the dominance of Western diagnostic categories, arguing that they often fail to capture the realities of populations experiencing ongoing, collective trauma.15 For example, she questions the adequacy of diagnoses like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in contexts where trauma is not a past event but a continuous condition.16 Instead, she promotes alternative concepts that reflect chronic and communal forms of distress. This approach not only challenges epistemological assumptions within psychiatry but also seeks to make mental health care more culturally and contextually relevant.
Jabr’s clinical and advocacy work also focuses on individuals who have experienced extreme forms of trauma, including torture, imprisonment, and displacement. In treating such patients, she combines therapeutic care with efforts to document and raise awareness of human rights violations. This dual role underscores her belief that healing cannot occur in isolation from truth and accountability. By giving voice to survivors and situating their experiences within a broader political framework, she contributes to both individual recovery and collective recognition of injustice.
Importantly, Jabr emphasizes resilience and the concept of sumud, an Arabic term that is often translated to “steadfastness.” However, she does not present resilience as mere endurance; rather, she frames it as an active process that includes resistance, solidarity, and the preservation of dignity. In her view, mental health is not simply the absence of illness but the presence of agency and meaning, even under conditions of constraint. This perspective offers a more dynamic and empowering understanding of psychological well-being.
Samah Sabr speaks about sumud in the context of genocide and colonial trauma in Toronto, Canada, January 2026.
Credit:
Samah Jabr Website
Thus, Jabr’s advocacy represents a significant departure from traditional psychiatric approaches. Her work not only addresses the needs of Palestinians living under occupation but also provides a broader critique of how mental health is conceptualized globally. In doing so, she invites practitioners and scholars alike to reconsider the ethical and political dimensions of their work.
Writing and Philosophy
Moreover, Jabr is an academic and prolific writer in public media on diverse subjects related to mental health and human rights. She is a regular contributor to Middle East Monitor and the Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs. She is also the author of several books: Derrière les Fronts: Chroniques d’une Psychiatre Psychothérapeute Palestinienne sous Occupation (2018) is her earlier work, and in many ways, it lays the foundation for the ideas she later develops in Radiance in Pain and Resilience. Like that later book, it is a collection of short essays (chroniques) written over many years—roughly from the early 2000s onward—based on her experience as a psychiatrist working in Palestine.17 The book focuses on what it means to practice psychiatry under occupation. A major theme in the book is transgenerational trauma—the idea that the effects of violence, displacement, and occupation are carried across generations and shape a collective memory. Jabr describes how daily experiences such as humiliation, fear, and instability affect not only individuals but also families and communities over time.
Palestinian psychologist Samah Jabr visited Australia as part of her Radiance in Pain and Resilience tour and book launch, October 13, 2025.
Credit:
Samah Jabr Instagram
In Behind the Frontlines: Chronicles of a Palestinian Psychiatrist Psychotherapist under Occupation (2019), Jabr argues that trauma is ongoing rather than in the past. Instead of a single shocking event, people are exposed to repeated stressors that shape identity, family life, and community relationships over time. Jabr often challenges Western psychiatric models for focusing too narrowly on individual diagnosis, suggesting that they can overlook what she sees as a collective and structural form of suffering tied to political reality.
Sumud: Resisting Oppression (2023) explores sumud (steadfastness) as both a psychological and political practice. In it, Jabr argues that under conditions of prolonged occupation and structural violence, survival itself can take the form of resistance—not just in overt political action but in maintaining dignity, identity, and community life despite ongoing pressure. Jabr explains, “We must treat not only the wound, but the world that caused it. Resilience is not just survival; it is the refusal to be dehumanized.”18 The book connects this idea to her clinical experience, showing how individuals and communities continue to function psychologically while facing chronic insecurity and loss. A key focus of the book is the tension between harm and resilience: how people can be deeply affected by trauma while still sustaining forms of agency, meaning, and solidarity. For Jabr, sumud is not passive endurance—it is active, culturally rooted, and often communal. It can include everyday acts of continuity, such as maintaining family bonds, education, storytelling, or simply remaining on the land.
Samah Jabr clarifies the difference between resilience and sumud in an interview for TRT World, March 2026.
Credit:
TRT World Podcast
Sumud in Times of Genocide (2024) continues her exploration of sumud but shifts the focus to how this concept functions during extreme, large-scale violence in Gaza. The Time of Genocide: Bearing Witness to a Year in Palestine(2024) is structured as a chronicle or diary-like record of a year in Palestine, with essays that respond to unfolding events in real time. The emphasis here is on witnessing: documenting psychological, social, and political realities as they happen, rather than reflecting on them retrospectively.
Her latest book is a collection of essays titled Radiance in Pain and Resilience: The Global Reverberation of Palestinian Historical Trauma (2025) that explores the psychological impact of life under prolonged conflict and occupation, particularly in Palestine. Drawing on her work as a psychiatrist as well as her lived experiences, Jabr combines clinical insight with political reflection, offering a perspective on mental health that is inseparable from social and historical realities. Rather than presenting a single narrative, the book brings together short, reflective pieces that can be read individually but can collectively build a powerful account of trauma and endurance. Throughout the essays, Jabr includes observations from her clinical practice alongside reflections on everyday life, war, imprisonment, and family relationships. These accounts serve both as a testimony and as a call for readers to bear witness. At the same time, the book does not dwell only on suffering—it also highlights solidarity, moral responsibility, and the possibility of change.
Current Work
Jabr continues to work as a psychiatrist serving Palestinian communities, particularly in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Her work focuses on treating individuals living under conditions of ongoing political violence, where trauma is not a past event but a continuous reality. Her clinical work emphasizes collective experience, dignity, and meaning making in situations where insecurity persists. She regularly lectures and trains people in the mental health field. In 2026, she has been participating in webinars and public dialogues on “decolonial mental health practice,” where she engages global audiences on the ethical and clinical implications of working in contexts of oppression.19
Reframing Mental Health and Justice
Jabr’s life work has been to redefine mental health. Rather than treating psychological suffering as an isolated, individual condition, she has consistently argued that it must be understood within its political and social environment. Her work has helped shift conversations in global mental health toward acknowledging structural violence and collective experience as central factors in psychological well-being. Her writing about mental health in this context has articulated a distinctly Palestinian voice in the field of psychiatry—one that combines clinical insight with cultural, ethical, and philosophical reflection. She has brought attention to the importance of dignity, resistance, and meaning in the face of adversity, emphasizing that resilience is not just survival but also the preservation of identity and humanity. She has not limited herself to theory or writing but has remained closely connected to patients and communities, ensuring that her ideas are rooted in lived reality. This combination of clinical work, intellectual contribution, and moral clarity defines her legacy: a sustained effort to humanize psychiatry and to insist that mental health cannot be separated from questions of justice, freedom, and collective dignity.
Sources
Alfarra, Jehan, and Falastin. “‘You Can’t Put Everyone on [a] Therapy Chair in Palestine’: Dr Samah Jabr on Trauma.” YouTube, September 4, 2025.
“Bearing Witness through Narrative and Ethical Mental Health Practice.” Concordia University, January 14, 2026.
“Dr. Samah Jabr Is a Palestinian Psychiatrist, Psychotherapist, and Writer.” Beyond the Frontlines. Accessed April 23, 2026.
Helbich, Maria, and Jabr, Samah. “A Call for Social Justice and for a Human Rights Approach with regard to Mental Health in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.” Health and Human Rights 24, no. 2 (2022): 305–318.
“Human Rights and Social Justice in Mental Health Work: Lessons from Palestine with Dr. Samah Jabr.” University of British Columbia, March 22, 2024.
Jabr, Samah. “Behind the Front Lines: Chronicles of a Palestinian Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist under Occupation.” [In French.] Culture de Palestine. Accessed August 24, 2026.
Jabr, Samah. “Dr. Samah Jabr.” Accessed April 23, 2026.
Jabr, Samah. “Mental Health in the Time of Genocide,” ReFrame: Global Mental Health from the Margins, no. 6 (October 2024).
Jabr, Samah. “The Occupation in My Office: Speaking Sense to Power in Therapeutic Work.” Middle East Eye, June 3, 2019.
Jabr, Samah. “Samah Jabr: The ‘Invisible Damage’ of Life under the Occupation.” Middle East Monitor, December 19, 2014.
Jabr, Samah. “Talking through Our Fears: Resisting the Palestinian Complacency of Silence.” Middle East Monitor, August 11, 2018.
Jabr, Samah. “What Palestinians Experience Goes beyond the PTSD Label.” Middle East Eye, February 7, 2019.
Jabr, Samah, and Mays Imad. “If I Must Die.” Science and Nonduality, February 2026.
“Palestine in Motion: Samah Jabr.” Al Jazeera, 2017.
“Shining a Light: The Power of Support Services for Women Survivors of Violence in Palestine.” United Nations, September 16, 2024.
[Profile photo: Wikipedia]
Notes
Jehan Alfarra and Falastin, “‘You Can’t Put Everyone on [a] Therapy Chair in Palestine’: Dr Samah Jabr on Trauma,” YouTube, September 4, 2025.
“Palestine in Motion: Samah Jabr,” Al Jazeera, 2017.
“Palestine in Motion.”
“Palestine in Motion.”
“Palestine in Motion.”
Samah Jabr, “Samah Jabr: The ‘Invisible Damage’ of Life under the Occupation,” Middle East Monitor, December 19, 2014.
Alfarra and Falastin, “‘You Can’t Put Everyone on [a] Therapy Chair in Palestine.’”
“Bearing Witness through Narrative and Ethical Mental Health Practice,” Concordia University, January 14, 2026.
Samah Jabr, “The Occupation in My Office: Speaking Sense to Power in Therapeutic Work,” Middle East Eye, June 3, 2019.
“Shining a Light: The Power of Support Services for Women Survivors of Violence in Palestine,” United Nations, September 16, 2024.
“Human Rights and Social Justice in Mental Health Work: Lessons from Palestine with Dr. Samah Jabr,” University of British Columbia, March 22, 2024.
Maria Helbich and Samah Jabr, “A Call for Social Justice and for a Human Rights Approach with regard to Mental Health in the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” Health and Human Rights 24, no. 2 (2022): 305–318.
“Dr. Samah Jabr Is a Palestinian Psychiatrist, Psychotherapist, and Writer,” Beyond the Frontlines, accessed April 23, 2026.
Samah Jabr, “Talking through Our Fears: Resisting the Palestinian Complacency of Silence,” Middle East Monitor, August 11, 2018.
Samah Jabr, “Mental Health in the Time of Genocide,” ReFrame: Global Mental Health from the Margins, no. 6 (October 2024).
Samah Jabr, “What Palestinians Experience Goes beyond the PTSD Label,” Middle East Eye, February 7, 2019.
Samah Jabr, “Behind the Front Lines: Chronicles of a Palestinian Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist under Occupation” [in French], Culture de Palestine, accessed August 24, 2026.
Samah Jabr, “Dr. Samah Jabr,” accessed April 23, 2026, https://drsamahjabr.com/.
Samah Jabr and Mays Imad, “If I Must Die,” Science and Nonduality, February 2026.