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thestorybehindthetale · 6 years

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The Story Behind ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’

Wes Craven’s

A Nightmare on Elm Street

will celebrate its 30th anniversary on November 9… the day the original opened up in theaters and introduced sleepy teens to the terror that is, was and forever shall be Freddy Krueger.

In preparation for the milestone, Craven has been sharing a ton of information about the creation – and impact – of his incredibly influential horror franchise, including how he came up with the idea in the first place.When he wasn’t busy sharing vital Nightmare on Elm Street information on Twitter, Wes Craven was taking part in a comprehensive oral history of Elm Street for Vulture.

The primary players behind the film open up in great detail about what went in to the hiring of the cast, the creation of Freddy, and the landscape of horror in the early 1980s. With Craven coming off of Swamp Thing and The Hills Have Eyes Part II at the time, he needed to find something that was truly terrifying. And he found it in real life, so to speak.

The way Wes Craven describes it, he came up with the idea for A Nightmare on Elm Street after reading an L.A. Times article about a family that had survived the Killing Fields in Cambodia. They made it to the United States, but a young boy in the family still found himself haunted by terrible nightmares while he slept. Craven says:

He told his parents he was afraid that if he slept, the thing chasing him would get him, so he tried to stay awake for days at a time. When he finally fell asleep, his parents thought this crisis was over. Then they heard screams in the middle of the night. By the time they got to him, he was dead. He died in the middle of a nightmare. Here was a youngster having a vision of a horror that everyone older was denying. That became the central line of Nightmare on Elm Street."

The origin of Freddy Krueger? That’s awesome. And far more psychologically chilling than the parental vendetta that led to the birth of the on-screen Krueger – which also is explained in greater detail in the Vulture oral history. Burning the neighborhood child murderer in the boiler room of the local school? Vicious. The 1980s were a different time, man.

People forget how terrifying the original Nightmare on Elm Street actually was. Because over the years, Freddy became more of a huckster, or a punchline, and the Elm Street sequels went for laughs as much as they went for scares. Now’s a good time to go back and revisit Wes Craven’s film, to remember why it became a classic in the first place.

In the late 1970s to the mid 80s, more than 110 men died in their sleep. Until their quiet final moments, they were young and healthy. Their families were stunned. Investigators were bewildered. With the victims all being Asian, medical authorities named the sleep scourge “Asian Death Syndrome.” Witnesses and families called it the night terror.

The first case was reported in California’s Orange County in 1977. By the summer of 1981, 20 people had fallen victim to the night terror. Authorities and medical responders were powerless as men across the country went to sleep and never woke up.

The exotic morbidity of the night terror caught the media’s attention, with the Los Angeles Times running a string of stories on the “medical mystery” in 1981. The New York Times and newspapers in Connecticut, Florida and elsewhere devoted column inches to the sleep deaths.

Freddy Krueger’s real-life victims weren't white, middle-class teens, as played by Heather Langenkamp and Johnny Depp in A Nightmare on Elm Street. They didn’t talk in mall slang, excessively blow dry their hair or dress in early 80s-style pastels. They were mostly male and were uniformly Asian. They were refugees with poor English skills who had fled their homeland to escape a nearly genocidal conflict.

They were the Hmong, a largely pre-literate or non-literate nomadic people from the mountains of Southeast Asia. Originally from southern China, they fled what had been their homeland for thousands of years in the mid-19th century, when the Manchu dynasty labeled them barbarians. They escaped to neighboring countries, notably Vietnam and Laos.

For the Hmong who relocated to Laos, their struggle continued first under French Colonial rule before settling down for the decades of Laotian royal power. When the Vietnam War spread to Laos and Cambodia, the American supported Royal Lao government recruited the Hmong to fight the Communist Pathet Lao troops.

The Hmong gained a reputation as fierce fighters, but the war devastated their people. An estimated one-third of the Hmong population in Laos was wiped out in the conflict. Following the 1975 Communist takeover, about 100,000 Hmong fled Laos to seek asylum in Thailand. Of the Hmongs who remained in Laos, thousands were detained in reeducation camps.

Away from their home, the Hmong struggled to adapt. They were mountain farmers and warriors with a unique religion centered on animals and spirits. They farmed by growing opium and cleared fields with fire. Their written language only came into being in the 20th century; many couldn’t read it anyway.

Then they came to America and began dying in their sleep.

The first modern recorded victim of the so-called “Asian Death Syndrome" was Ly Houa, of Orange County. Before his sudden 1977 death, he had acclimated to American life and worked as a medic. An Orange County social worker who knew him told the L.A. Times said she was shocked to hear of his passing. Houa was in robust physical condition, she said, and health-conscious through his professional expertise.

By the summer of 1981, the L.A. Times reported, 20 Hmong men living in America died under the same circumstances. All were young and showed no signs of ill health until death took them in their sleep. Their families said most didn’t smoke or drink. Some witnesses said they heard troubled breathings and groans right before the death.

Only about 35,000 Hmong lived in America at the time. For the communities scattered throughout the states, the deaths were more than morbid curiosities. They were a seeming existential threat to their people. The ratio of victims to total Hmongs in the country equalled all five leading causes of death for other American men in their age group. Orange County Medical Examiner Tom Prendergast told a reporter that the mysterious incidents accounted for half of all deaths among the Hmong in America during that period.

The deaths prompted an inquiry by the Federal Center for Disease Control. They tried to contain the unexplained horror of the sleep death in the dry wording of “Sudden Unexpected Nocturnal Death Syndrome,” or SUNDS.

Officials suspected cardiac failure, but were otherwise baffled. Many blamed the stress of culture shock for refugees moving to the U.S. Minnesota Medical Examiner Dr. Michael McGee told the New York Times he thought Hmong victims in St. Paul may have been frightened to death. Hang Pao, a former Laotian general and a political leader for the Hmong, publically attributed the deaths to wartime gassing attacks. Pao, eager to turn public opinion against the Hmong’s old communists foes, said the nighttime seizures were delayed reactions to the chemical toxins the Pathet Lao used to poison villages.

No definite cause emerged. The mystery deaths peaked in 1981, when 26 men, mostly Hmong refugees from Laos, died in their sleep. A few victims of the seizures who were immediately treated by CPR survived.

While the sudden sleep death hit the American Hmong refugees the hardest, the mystery illness wasn’t limited to their people alone. The sleeping death was striking Asian men across the globe.

The disease had a long history in Asia, even in countries with no Hmong population. In 1983, the Associate Press reported that Japanese and Filipinos were dying from similar unexplained deaths. Researchers estimated that between 500 and 1,000 Japanese men, described in their 20s and 30s and healthy, died in their sleep of the condition known in Japan as “Pokkuri,” wordplay slang for death that occurs in a “snap.”

Recently uncovered research indicated it wasn’t new. CDC official Roy Baron and forensic pathologist Robert Kirscher published a report saying the attacks predated the Hmong arrival in America.

As researchers dug into the cultures with histories of SUNDS, they found something surprising. Freddy Krueger wasn’t the only killer stalking its victims through their dreams. According to Asian folklore, monsters had been preying on sleepers for years.

Hmong traditional beliefs revolve around nature spirits and ancestor worship. Among the most feared spirits is a nightmare monster known as the Dab Tsog. When Hmong fail to perform religious rituals properly, their ancestor and village spirits stop guarding them, leaving them vulnerable to the Tsog Tsuam, the crushing attack the Dab Tsog uses to press the life out of its victims.

Shelley Adler, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, conducted dozens of field interviews among the Hmong population while researching her 2011 book Sleep Paralysis. She found people who survived SUNDS, who related tales of dream visitations from dark creatures. One interviewee said a large, hairy monster, which he likened to an American stuffed animal, accosted him in his dream. As the oversized creature set on him with claws and teeth, the dreamer was paralyzed but still able to hear voices in his home.

The Dab Tsog doesn’t haunt the dreams of Asian men alone. In the Philippines, where 43 people out of 100,000 die from SUNDS per year, the death was known as Bangungut, a Tagalog word meaning “to rise and moan during sleep.”

Filipino folklore holds that malevolent spirits called Batibat are behind Bangungut. The Batibat have the appearance of ugly, obese women and live in trees. They infest houses when the trees they live in are used to build a home. Enraged by their displacement, they wait until the homeowners are asleep they kill them in the style of the Tsog Tsaum, sitting on their victim’s chest and face to force out their life force like air from a balloon.

By the time A Nightmare on Elm Street was released in 1984, the Hmong SUNDS was slowing to a halt after its 1981 peak. It hadn’t been cured, but after taking the lives of 116 healthy young men, the night terror shuffled back into whatever dark dream it came from.

As Freddy Krueger grew increasingly cartoonish and prone to one-liners in his follow-up films, the real-life sleep deaths became less deadly. Officials like Kirschner took an optimistic assessment, postulating that stress from American culture shock caused the previous attacks. With the Hmong more used to life in the states, Kirschner said, the stress was reduced and the danger was over.

The same year, SUNDS researchers made a breakthrough. After studying the medical histories of three survivors of the attacks, medical examiners were able to identify ventricular arrhythmias as the cause of the fatal cardiac arrests. The cause of the arrhythmias wasn’t yet known, but medical authorities now knew what happened to the heart before the SUNDS deaths. In 1988, CDC pathologist Roy Gibson Parrish published a study proposing that SUNDS victims were likely carriers of hereditary defects that affected tissues that conduct electric signals. While in most cases the defects wouldn’t be a problem, they could become fatal in a body undergoing stress.

And while the Hmong were moving past their twin traumas of warfare and displacement, the night terror was attacking displaced Asian elsewhere in the globe. In 1990, two Thai men working construction in Singapore died in their sleep on the same night.

The coincidence of two SUNDS death in a single night was shocking. But they weren’t alone. About 200 Thai people living in Singapore are believed to have died in their sleep since 1983. In Sleep Paralysis, Adler quoted heart specialist Michael Brodsky attributing the deaths to stress, saying that the men were working 13-plus hour days while enduring slavery-like conditions.

#thestorybehindthetale #talesofterror

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gingerssnapped720 · 5 years

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Introduction To The Cult

Good morning, dear reader. What shall we talk about today?

When last we met, I was babbling on about my immediate family dynamics, and I ended my post with the birth of myself and my little brother. I suppose that’s as good a place to start as any.

Like I said before, I was born on Friday, July 20, 1979. My mother told me that my original due date was at the end of August, but that I was born several weeks early. My mother hemorrhaged while giving birth to me, and needed an emergency c-section. I am told that I cried incessantly because I was too thin and could not hold my own body heat, so Mom put a hot water bottle in my bassinet with me to keep me warm.

My bassinet was large and black, and converted into a victorian style pram, with chrome decorative mounts on the sides and hood. Mom made both yellow and green skirts for it, with satin ribbons and matching sheets. She loved to sew when I was little. She made our clothes, dolls, doll clothes, pillows, and curtains. I still have one of the dresses Mom made, and my daughter Katie wore it when she was around 9 or 10. I cry every time I see the picture of her wearing it.

I don’t remember much of my early years. My very first memory is sitting on the living room floor, watching my Dad read the newspaper, and trying to get his attention. I must have been around four years old. I remember my Mom being pregnant and losing the baby. She named the baby Robin, because she didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl, and she spoke of them once in a while when she was especially sad. And then when she became pregnant again, I remember how scared she was of the baby making it. But he did make it.

Nathan was born April 19, 1984, and I remember spending several days at Baka*’s house while my Mom was in the hospital. I liked being with Baka, except for her religious fanaticism. She was old world Polish, and she cooked homemade perogi and borscht, which the smell of makes me sick, even to this day. And seaweed. Always this woman with the boiled seaweed. She swore it made her strong. She was strong. There’s a story of Baka buying herself a kitchen table set from a yard sale, and carrying it home piece by piece. She hurt her knee once when walking home from the grocery store, when she tripped over railroad tracks, and she limped all the way home. Groceries and all.

After Nathan came home from the hospital, life got interesting. Mom had had another c-section, because in those days once you’d had a c-section, that is the only way they’d let you deliver from then on. She’d hemorrhaged again, and I remember the blood issue coming up for the first time. Whispers in the hallway and at our worship meetings about whether or not my mother had received a blood transfusion, were hushed whenever I got close enough to hear. I don’t know if she did or not.

Why is this a big deal? Because, dear reader, now comes the first “unbelievable” part of my story. You see religious fanaticism was not just a flaw of my grandmother, it was a flaw of the entire community of people I was raised with. It is an affliction that three of my aunts and two of my uncles suffer from to this day. It is the affliction of two of my children’s paternal grandparents, and the affliction of multiple family members of dear friends, who have since escaped the horror we grew up in.

When I say the word “cult” people instantly think of scenarios like “Heaven's Gate” or “The Manson Family”. Compounds with barracks, polygamy, hundreds of children fathered by a handful of men, and escapes delicately orchestrated by social workers and the FBI.

Sorry to disappoint.

My life inside the cult was not nearly so dramatic, nor was my leaving. No news cameras, no guns, no blood, no poisoned kool-aid. Nothing but the pounding of my own heart as my two little girls clung to me. No husband, no job, no home, no family, no money, no electricity, no heat, no phone, and a car I had no way to pay for. Leaving was silent. And the silence was more terrifying than gunshots.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The cult my family belonged to was an extension of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. The Jehovah’s Witnesses. This religious organization estimates some 8.5 million members, although Wolfram Alpha estimates that number is closer to 16.6 million people who identify themselves as Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide. They have 119,954 congregations in 240 countries.

“But that’s not a cult!”, you say.

I can hear you, dear reader. Rolling your eyes? Let me guess. You have a mother, brother, best-friend’s cousin who is a “Jehovah”, as so many people refer to them?

“They’re the nicest people I’ve ever met!”, you say. “I work with a guy who’s a ‘Jehovah”. He’s such a hard worker! Always on time, never swears, never a bad word from him about anyone!”

Yes. I’m sure all of that is true.

“But I’ve been to a few of their meetings! They’re so nice and welcoming! They’ve even been to my house and prayed with me. They study with my daughter and she loves it!”

Yes, yes I’m sure that has been your experience. There is a reason that has been your experience. And over the course of this narrative, I will show you what that reason is.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines religion as “a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices” and also as “scrupulous conformity”. I find both those definitions fascinating. I wonder what religion means to you personally, reader?

When I was born, I was born into a strange world. There were five religious meetings a week, split into three sessions, held on three separate days. Monday was our “Book Study” meeting. A bible based publication produced by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, was studied in sections, once a week at the home of an approved congregational member in good standing. It was conducted by a male Elder, who was assisted by another male who read aloud from the selected publication. This reader usually held the title of “Ministerial Servant” or “Baptized Publisher”.

Wednesday was the night of the “Ministry School” and “Local Needs” meetings, held back to back, generally beginning at 7pm and ending between 9 and 9:30pm. This was the meeting that tested the backsides and skull resilience of every infant, child, and teen in the seats. Children were expected to be quiet and well behaved. Even infants were subject to physical discipline if they misbehaved. Children over the age of four were expected to sit up straight and pay attention to the speaker, regardless of the subject. My friend John’s father used to flick the back of his children’s heads so hard it could be heard several rows back. Every child within earshot would sit up straighter so the same wouldn’t befall them from their own parents or other congregation members within flicking range.

I remember very young children with pajamas on under their suits and dresses. Females were not permitted to wear pants during ANY religious event, regardless of weather, health, etc. Sleepy children with sore backsides, desperately trying to stay awake through the incessant droning of the speaker to avoid another lashing with the ruler or wooden spoon that stood straight up out of their parent’s book bag or briefcase pocket. A proud symbol to the congregational Elders, and anyone else, that discipline was swift and merciless in their household.

These wednesday meetings were where constituents learned how to talk to “wordly” people, to “share the good news of God’s kingdom”. Basically it was recruitment training. Congregation members were warned to appear “blameless in all things” as “not to bring reproach on God’s name”. To be “no part of the world as Jesus was no part of the world.” Here male adults and boys as young as eight were called upon to give “Talks” or sermons that they had wrote themselves, and then publicly critiqued by an Elder. Role play for female adults down to very young girls about how to use charm, modesty, and bible knowledge to gain entry to people’s homes and start bible studies with the families they met in their door to door “teaching” work. These role play sessions were also critiqued publicly. Disabled and elderly congregation members were encouraged to write letters or make phone calls to families who had recently lost someone, and “teach” them about how they could see their loved ones resurrected. These families were found through obituary listings and newspaper articles, and by picking names out of the phone book.

Nothing like preying on bereaved families at their most vulnerable. The thought of it now makes me sick to my stomach.

Sunday held the “Sunday Talk” and “Watchtower Study” meetings. The sunday talk would consist of an Elder from another local congregation giving an hour long sermon, the subject of which was selected from a list of approved outlines, and then approved by the congregation “Talk Coordinator”. After the “Talk”, the congregation studied a preselected article in the “Watchtower” publication, which was a thin magazine, written and produced by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, that was also used in their door to door preaching. This meeting was conducted much like the Wednesday night Book Study meeting, with an Elder presiding, and a Ministerial Servant reading. Pre-written questions were asked by the presiding elder, and microphones were passed to constituents who wished to answer those questions, often by reading the answer verbatim from the article.

After the Sunday meeting, congregational members were encouraged to participate in the door to door preaching work. There was also preaching work on Saturday morning, usually beginning around 9am. This “work” was to the dread and embarrassment of every school age member in attendance. We lived in fear of knocking on a door and finding a classmate, or worse a bully, on the other side. Congregation members who did not participate in going door to door regularly would be chastised by Elders, shamed by their peers, and ostracized by the congregation as a whole.

My entire family lived with the label of “Bad Association” due to my father no longer attending meetings beginning in 1984, and my mother’s severe and obvious mental health issues. My mother suffered from Agoraphobia, Social Phobia, Claustrophobia, Depression, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and may have also been schizophrenic. All of which were exacerbated by my brother Michael’s suicide in 1990.

Mental health issues were not adequate to excuse you from your duty to preach door to door, participate at meetings, or to appear “blameless in all things”. Sufferers of mental health disorders (including Homosexuality, and Gender Dysphoria) were counseled to pray. If prayer didn’t work, they were shamed by the Elders and other congregation members for not praying hard enough, because Jehovah their God would save them from their suffering, if they only had faith. Mental health sufferers were forbidden to seek outside counseling, use psychiatric prescriptions, or speak of their struggles as not to “stumble other members of the congregation”.

My brother died, because of this heartless policy.

#cult #JW #JehovahsWitnesses #MentalHealth #Suicide #GingersSnapped720

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docfuture · 7 years

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Sparring Match, Part 2

[ I originally intended this fill-in as a short vignette while I work on resolving some problems with The Maker’s Ark, but it kept expanding. It takes place during The Maker’s Ark, between Chapter 30 and Chapter 32. The most recent regular chapter is here, links to my other work here. I’m shooting for two weeks for the third (and hopefully final) installment.]

Previous: Part 1

A young man stood in the ruins of a house. He looked alert, healthy, and more than competent, but several parts of his body--the outer edges of his hands, both temples, and an area in the center of his chest--appeared to made out of some kind of green metal. The house had once been much larger, with side rooms fallen in turn to disrepair and collapse over many years. The last, central part had recently burned, and the ashes still emitted grey tendrils that were smoke one moment, ghostly fragments of old smiles and laughter the next. The ruins were alone in deserted wasteland that stretched to the horizon in all directions, under a pitiless sun. There were a few mountains, and distant lines of green and grey that might be oases or cities, but they wavered, mirage-like. Breakpoint's self-image turned to look at Yiskah with a faint smile. "So. This is my place. Not much, but it's where I'm at." Yiskah met his eyes. "Looks like long-standing recurrent major depression to me. That you've been very good at hiding, even considering your danger sense. Probably because of that." She pointed at his chest. "Which is worrying for a different reason." He frowned. "What are you pointing at?" "The green metal on your chest." "What green metal?" There were no mirrors for telepathic self-images, so it was quite possible for people to be unaware of how they projected until Yiskah told them. "Never mind," she said. "If you're unaware of it, it's almost certainly part of your problem, but I want to learn more before I try any kind of mind probe. Let's go back out." "All right." A shift in view, and they were sitting together on the couch in the isolation room Yiskah had selected for assessment. Her hand rested on his back. Physical contact made some kinds of telepathic work easier for her, and it could also make it less disturbing for the subject. Breakpoint looked up and smiled more normally. "Expected that to trigger danger, but it didn't. You're good at this." "Not as good or as experienced as I'd like to be. I think you didn't trigger because the consequence you feared has already happened--Jumping Spider dropped you as her partner, and won't even consider working with you until you've dealt with your problems properly. She suspected your danger sense was keeping you from getting help because of her." "Reasonable." He looked down. "And if you think it's possible, too, then she was right that it was a risk--and one my danger sense couldn't help with. I know what I'd do for her, so I understand. No matter how much it shook me." Yiskah leaned back. "Your Database bio was rather lacking, presumably at your request. So I have some background questions. What age were you when your powers first started to become noticeable?" "That's hard to answer, because it was gradual. It wasn't so much discovering what I could do as realizing what other people couldn't. By the time I was ten or eleven, I'd figured out that I was good at breaking things and getting away with it." He smiled. "And that this wasn't a talent I particularly wanted to use or tell anyone else about. But I thought it was just a knack, not anything extraordinary. "Then one summer when I was twelve, I had a couple spikes of panic out of the blue, and a feeling that things had sort of shifted. Something was different. I started paying more attention after that, and realized that I had something special. And that it was really important not to reveal it, because the backlash from the Lost Years open recruiting program mess was in the news. I didn't want to get 'recruited'." Yiskah frowned and tapped at her handcomp. "Could it have been June 21st?" "It might well have been. Why?" "A lot happened that day. Golden Valkyrie created Kyrjaheim, she and Doc gave it an ecosystem, and the portal zones to Xelia and Grs'thnk closed, among other things. Are those events that might have set off a reaction from your danger sense?" "I really don't know. Power, wide effect, and sudden change are all necessary, if it isn't something specific to me, but--" "Oh, and Flicker was conceived." "That would do it." Yiskah raised an eyebrow. "Is Flicker a common source of false alarms for you?" "Yeah. She's the loudest source on the frequencies I pick up. But it's not fair to call them all false alarms. If something is dangerous for the whole world, it's dangerous to me. And she's so fast that I'll often get an immediate threat spike--one I can't do anything about, but I can't just ignore, because it might mask something else." "I see." Breakpoint studied her for a moment. "I think you more than see--I think you deliberately used Flicker for masking when you were ready to contact Jumping Spider, just before I told you to stop." "Guilty." Yiskah smiled wryly. "I knew I couldn't deceive your danger sense, but I could overload it. You have a bandwidth problem." "Yeah, I do." He looked thoughtful. "That's fair. I knew I had some kind of problem, and I wanted help finding my limits and vulnerabilities. I didn't expect it to be easy. And your mind trap thing seems to keep my danger sense from picking up anything from you until you act or are about to." "That still leaves it quite effective. I can slip by if you're distracted--but not fool you. And I still don't have anything other than guesses at why a full probe is so dangerous. At least talking isn't." "Not yet." He smiled. "I spent most of my teen years training in martial arts when I wasn't in school. I also did a few things that made me look different than I do now, because I already knew that if I ever become a superhero, I'd have to do a clean break from my old life. No way I wanted anyone tracking down my family--that's why I've been vague about a lot of stuff, and used the cover identity Doc put together for me. I saw what happened to family and friends of superheroes who weren't careful enough, or were just unlucky." "Sounds like the Lost Years shaped you pretty strongly." "Oh yeah. I didn't try to start until they ended. Then I went to Doc, and--" "That part was in the Database. But back up a minute." "Okay." "Did you form any close personal relationships outside of your family?" Breakpoint shook his head. "Not really. My danger sense warned me away from a lot of people. I found it kind of annoying at first. Especially when it was a pretty girl who seemed interested in me. I tried to find a way around it once. I thought I could handle whatever happened--but she was the one who got in trouble. I paid attention after that." "Were you lonely?" "When I stopped to think about it. But I kept busy. I finally tried looking for interesting people who weren't dangerous, and that worked better." A half-smile. "I think I was getting warned away from people I might reveal my powers to." Yiskah nodded. "Which would tend to rule out anything close, at that age." "Yeah. There were a couple of my martial arts teachers who figured out I had something, just from what I could do. But they didn't push. The best one told me something that really stuck with me, though. He said that an important part of growing up for most people was learning from mistakes. And that if I wasn't making mistakes, I'd have to find some other way to get that part." "Ahh. And did you?" "For some things, yes. For others, I still don't really know. I read biographies and watched shows about people I admired. I learned meditation and a few other tricks. Some of them were a waste of time, but my danger sense steered me away from anything really harmful. And I've never been all that hot at studying, but practice is different." He met her eyes again. "After everything I saw and heard about during the Lost Years, I wanted to be the best superhero I could be." Yiskah drew in a breath. "I have a terrible feeling I know where this is going." "Oh?" "The green metal. I know what it represents. Did you think your danger sense would be enough to let you safely self-modify your mind?" "No. But my weakness detection works on myself, too." Yiskah bit back the urge to yell--because the person she most wanted to yell at was herself at sixteen, in her old body, falling prey to the same arrogance. "You went after your own mind," she said, choosing her words with care, "Chipping away at anything that wasn't 'perfect superhero' with the equivalent of a chisel. You didn't have a good model, or any theory, but you thought that wouldn't matter, because you'd always know the best place to hit next. Do I have that right?" He frowned. "Yeah, that's about it. But--" "Couldn't you feel how dangerous that was? Didn't it hurt?" "Yes, it was dangerous." He looked bleak for a moment. "And yes. It hurt. But it sure felt like it worked." "Doc and I both thought so too, when we made similar mistakes. I found out I was wrong and nearly died very quickly. And both of us had a lot more theory and practice. That's what was ultimately responsible for his coma." Breakpoint looked surprised. "I thought it was from an outside attack." "It was. The form it took was sabotage of mental self-modification. Which was very easy because it's full of subtle, lethal pitfalls. Some can take a long time before their final bite--it was twenty-four years for Doc." "Ouch. Looks like I did find a mistake to make." Breakpoint looked down. "And it's hard to learn from something if you haven't realized it was a mistake yet." "Yup. Who did you use for your perfect superhero template?" "The Volunteer." "Understandable. He's a good moral example. But he's not human, and there's so much you couldn't possibly have known about him." She shook her head. "I'll say this for your danger sense. It was good enough to let you fool everyone for a while--as long as they didn't get close. And it's kept you alive for twelve years, despite everything. But it makes it much trickier for anyone to help you out of the hole you've dug for yourself." He nodded slowly. "I can see that." "You've clearly been having trouble for quite a while. When did it start?" "Well, everything went fine for a while. I was making a difference. Putting supervillains away, helping root out police corruption, taking apart a giant killer robot--" "I remember that." "Everyone who knows about me at all seems to. Taking apart a hundred foot tall robot with just a crowbar--on live TV--sticks in people's minds. But there was only the one. I sure wouldn't wish for more--but I still had to find some other way to make myself useful. The cops learned to avoid me, the villains I put in prison mostly stayed there, and the superhero vocation started to change." "What do you mean?" asked Yiskah. "Well, there's Doc's crisis tracking system, alert rosters, and the rest. They work really well. They've cut down the average time from the start of an event until the first superhero gets there by a lot." Breakpoint smiled. "Which is good. It's what we all want. But it means the first superhero who gets there--isn't me." "Ah." "I can't fly, or teleport, or anything like that, and I don't work with anyone who does. So the faster superheroes usually have everything taken care of by the time I could get there, unless I'm already nearby. Which means in practice that I have to be in the same city. And I've always moved around, so I didn't have the local connections anywhere to dig below the surface and catch things before they happen, the way Nighthaunt does." He looked up again. "And without that--there wasn't enough in any one city for me to help with. To make enough of a difference. Which was my other problem. I can't stop an auto accident, or put out a big fire, or... so many other things. All I'm good at is breaking things and beating people up. And guarding. I'm great at guarding--but that's seldom vital." Yiskah raised an eyebrow. "Well, now I'm sure about another problem. You have a severe case of imposter syndrome." Another surprised look. "Me? How can a superhero possibly...have..." He stopped talking and his eyes unfocused as he looked inwards. "Okay. I guess it is possible. Not sure why I didn't see it before." "Probably because you didn't consider that constantly striving towards impossible goals might create a problem--because it was part of your ideal. For what it's worth, it helped me to know you were on guard when I worked on Doc." Breakpoint smiled. "Good to know. But I've always wanted to do more. And eventually I realized another thing I could be good at--backup. I didn't care about attention, or being in the spotlight, or any of that. I just wanted to make a difference." "So you decided to find a partner. Did you have some special reason for picking Jumping Spider?" "Well, I knew some of what she'd done, and could guess more. I knew there would always be secrets, things she couldn't tell me. And it would be hard to gain her trust. But I thought someone reliable with danger sense would be about as close to a perfect partner as she could get. I just ended up not quite close enough." Yiskah considered what she was picking up from her mind scan. "All right, you're not in a place for further questioning to be productive yet. How are you feeling about the full probe? Still dangerous?" He had already tensed. "Yeah." "Okay. I have another idea. I can do an emotional memory context probe. That's less intrusive and more impressionistic--I'll get images of memory groupings, filtered through your perceptions, then mine. I can get an overview, then look at a few samples, and back off if I sense you triggering. How does that sound?" He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "More unsettling. Less dangerous. Which means better. Right?" "Yep. Ready?" "As I'll ever be. Go ahead." ***** Breakpoint's self-image had been about how he projected his identity. What Yiskah saw now was how he organized his memories. There were a few common themes, but the overall impression was quite different. There was a multi-story building, well designed and solidly built, by someone who had thought hard about earthquakes and hurricanes. But the inside was odd. There were several levels of humming machinery--procedural memory and trained reflexes. Those looked fine. The top stories were devoted to Breakpoint's memories of being a superhero. There was a multi-level library full of case studies, after action analyses, and cautionary lessons. It looked complete to the point of obsession. She glanced at a few--even the tiniest errors and perceived imperfections were the subject of merciless dissection. It confirmed some of what she'd already determined. The top level was more telling. It held his successes and accomplishments. But it was organized like a museum rather than a trophy hall--and it was conspicuously more than two-thirds empty. It was sized for what he thought he should have done, diminishing his real attainments. Yiskah moved on. Where was the all the rest? His childhood and everything else? She finally found an inconspicuous door leading to a basement. It was unpainted, and stuck when she first tried to open it--it wasn't locked, but it didn't quite fit the frame. That was jarring, compared to the rest of the building. Yiskah went down the dimly lit stairs--there was a lightbulb, but it was undersized--and entered the small room at the bottom. It was unfinished, with walls of bare concrete and no windows, and was stuffed with rows of utility shelves holding boxes. There was dust, and many of the older boxes looked like never-unpacked leftovers from a move. Yiskah ran her fingers over a few boxes, collecting impressions, and realized she was looking at how Breakpoint treated the entire rest of his life--everything before he became a superhero except training, and everything personal, ever. A few boxes were isolated against one wall and swathed in multiple layers of heavy tape, and Yiskah could feel a strong sense of tension when she approached them. She backed off; she didn't want to trigger his danger sense, and learning their exact content wasn't essential. One shelf looked recently disturbed. It was at a slight angle to the others and the boxes were newer. Several of them were still open or had been reopened. Yiskah stopped in front of one and paused. No sense of tension. These weren't dangerous to him--at least not now. They were memories of his time with Jumping Spider--everything other than fieldwork and operations. Yiskah touched the edge of one and got a vivid impression and a visceral shock. Not from Breakpoint, but herself. And not from the memory, or the context, or even Breakpoint's reaction--it was touching, and hinted at much more--but at where he kept it, and how little he valued his own part. Why didn't you keep this close? It should have been on the top floor, not hidden away in a box in the basement. It was time to go back out. She could see some of his problems much more clearly now. She just didn't know how to help. It was time to bring in someone who might. ***** "Breakpoint, this is Osk. She's a healer." Osk was one of the three Choosers in the group that had come to Flicker to secure her help in fixing the magical mess she'd unintentionally left behind in the Nine Worlds after killing the Wanderer. Yiskah had alerted Osk as soon as the seriousness of Breakpoint's difficulties had become clear. She was a strong empath, and had hundreds of years experience healing the physical and mental wounds of a hall full of warriors who spent much of their time killing each other for practice. Yiskah had kept her updated, and Osk already had strong opinions on what was necessary. Yiskah was less certain. The warriors looked human, but they weren't--and neither was Osk. How useful her experience would be was still an open question. "Pleased to meet you," said Breakpoint, and they clasped forearms. "I was busy at the time, but I know you healed Jetgirl after the Xelian attack. I also heard about your visit to Tokyo. You took the time to teach as soon as the battles were over. I respect that." Osk smiled. "Some tasks cannot justly be delayed." She nodded to Yiskah, conveying a load of meaning, and turned back to Breakpoint. "It is an honor to finally meet Earth's Battle Seer." "Battle Seer? I am unfamiliar with the term." "I will gladly explain at length, if your time allows it. It does not, yet. I would say, trust that I know them well. But trust is at issue, is it not? So look at me. What do you See? Do I endanger your honor or chosen path?" Breakpoint hesitated. Osk was honest and direct, but if she triggered his danger sense... Yiskah cleared her throat. "That may not be the best--" "Caution will not serve," said Osk, not looking away from Breakpoint. "His Sight will not allow you to learn what you wish from him without a promise you would be unwilling to make blindly. Or perhaps at all." "But--" Breakpoint interrupted. "Can you bring the dead back to life?" he asked Osk. "Yes," she responded. "Though not unconditionally. Do you fear that? Would you not wish to live again, given the choice?" "Not unconditionally." "I understand. I would not bring you back from your chosen end. But you are already deep in the Seer's madness, in a way I have seen before. You are closer to the edge than you think." Breakpoint raised an eyebrow. "My danger sense is working fine. Maybe too well. My problem--" "You See the slippery ledge clearly, where others see only fog. But you have lost track of your own feet. You are already standing on that ledge, dwelling on your lost rope, now gone into the abyss. Your problem is finding a way to accept a hand up, with none to trust and your Sight entranced by the fall." Breakpoint's eyes narrowed, and he straightened slightly. Even without a probe, Yiskah could feel the taste of his mind change. It was like... It was like the einherjar flying their mechs into the fleet battle, knowing they were going to die, and deciding whether it was time to start singing their death songs yet. Breakpoint thought he was going to die. Right here, in this room. Soon. He was struggling to accept it--but his danger sense wasn't going off. Which was dicey enough if it was just his self-identity as a superhero in question, but if-- Now Yiskah picked up a strong pulse from his danger sense, and he turned his head to look at her. "Yiskah, please," he said. "You have been kind. I don't want to hurt you when I go." "You can't--" "He can," said Osk. "You have been reckless, thinking he wished to live." She smiled. "But there is no need for you to interfere--I will speak to him, and we will see if there is a path for him that ends in life. He is more einherjar than any human I've met. He reminds me of Hrothgar, before the Trickster poisoned his mind and the madness fully took him, so there is hope." So many questions--but Breakpoint was listening. "Osk? Are you tantalizing him deliberately?" she sent. "Yes. He hungers to know of anyone like him--and curiosity may serve long enough for hope to return." Yiskah paused. "How can I help?" "Go to his partner. She will be key, if he is to live. Speak frankly to her. Dig, as only you can. She may resent you, but she will care for him more. We will bring him back, if his path allows. And do not berate yourself--your strength and compassion have helped. Everyone makes mistakes when young." "Even Choosers?" "Hrothgar was the first einherjar Lif pulled from the Void. He was not a mistake--but bringing him into a world with the Trickster was." "I see. All right, I'll be in touch." ***** "Come on in," said Jumping Spider over the external com, and Yiskah entered the secure guest room, closing the door behind her. Jumping Spider was leaning back in the chair at the main workstation, hands laced behind her head. She'd changed out of her costume, jump boots, and wig, so few people would have guessed her identity from her appearance--but she wasn't in disguise, either, so she still looked dangerous. A lot had happened since the last time she'd had safe, convenient Database access, and she'd been bringing herself up to date on the implications for her work. Yiskah sat down on the edge of the bed, and Jumping Spider spun the chair to face her. "How bad?" she asked. Yiskah took a breath. "I did all I could, then called in Osk. She told me to talk to you. She's keeping him breathing and curious enough to keep listening. But he doesn't believe he's going to walk out of the isolation room alive." Jumping Spider narrowed her eyes. "What the hell happened? I pulled the rug out from under him so he'd stop pretending he could patch things while we kept doing field work. You said you were ready. Did you botch something?" "I don't think so--at least nothing that would affect anything I'd try to do. But I don't know for sure. I never did a full probe--his danger sense never allowed it." "Oh, that's just peachy. So you don't even know what's wrong?" "I know enough to get us started. Here is the root of it--he was traumatized by the Lost Years before his powers manifested, and he was determined to protect his family. He spent years disconnecting himself from his old life before he became a superhero, then tossed it all into the basement of his mind and used his weakness detection to try to remake himself in the image of the Volunteer. Without any private life--because he didn't think the Volunteer had one." "Oh hell." "He doesn't seem to realize what he's missing anymore. All that work to protect his family and he barely remembers he had one. I couldn't even get names or faces from a mind scan. He got rid of his old life and didn't think he needed a new one, except as a superhero. He can fake one, and he has acquaintances. But no friends. He has no one at all." "Except me." "Except you. And I know what you're going to say. He can't depend on just you. And you're right. But if he's going to live, we need to start from where he is, not where he should be." Jumping Spider's real hairstyle was a dark brown buzzcut, with a touch of gray at the sides. She ran her hand over it and stared at the wall as she thought. "Damn," she said. "I knew he was a good actor, I knew. I saw it. I pushed him hard before I was willing to accept him as a partner. I even double-checked the Database to make sure he wasn't an alien or a demon. I thought he was hiding his life--for a good reason. But he was hiding his no life. And then... he started to have one, because of me." "There has to be more," said Yiskah. "Osk told me to dig--at you. And something bad has to have happened, recently. I can't see how he'd be in this much trouble, otherwise." "I'm going to have to run you through the whole mess, I suppose." "If you want to help him, yes." A snorted laugh. "I do. Oh, I do."

Next: Part 3

#Maker's Ark #FallofDocFuture #FallMisc

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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‘Poor, smart and desperate to be rich’: How Epstein went from teaching to Wall Street

BY LINDA ROBERTSON AND AARON BREZEL | Published JULY 16, 2019 06:28 PM | Miami Herald | Posted July 17, 2019 |

Before Jeffrey Epstein managed money for the world’s rich and powerful, he was educating their teenage children.

Epstein, the accused sex trafficker awaiting a bail ruling in a Manhattan jail, taught math and physics at the Dalton School, a private K-12 institution whose students are the sons and daughters of New York City’s elite. It was there on the aristocratic Upper East Side in the mid-1970s that a charming, bright young man with a head for numbers catapulted from his Coney Island roots to a double life of astounding wealth and disturbing depravity.

By the time he was 45, Epstein was living 18 blocks from Dalton in a nine-story mansion now worth $77 million, one of several posh homes where investigators say he molested dozens upon dozens of young girls, who were recruited to give him massages and coerced into sex acts. He followed a similar pattern at his waterfront estate in Palm Beach, where he pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting prostitution — despite being charged with far more serious crimes against underage girls — and received a remarkably lenient sentence, courtesy of a U.S. attorney who would later become President Donald Trump’s labor secretary.

Epstein launched his financier career during a parent-teacher conference at Dalton in 1976 when he dazzled a student’s father with his intelligence. Epstein confided that he wasn’t cut out to be a teacher. He envisioned himself on Wall Street.

“This parent was so wowed by the conversation he told my father, ‘You’ve got to hire this guy,’ ” recalled Lynne Koeppel, daughter of the late Alan “Ace” Greenberg, an executive at Bear Stearns investment bank. “Give Jeff credit. He was brilliant.”

Greenberg was also impressed by Epstein, then 23, a two-time college dropout and son of a parks department employee. Greenberg, son of an Oklahoma City women’s clothing store owner, rose from Bear Stearns clerk to CEO and had an affinity for employees he called “PSDs” — poor, smart and desperate to be rich.

“That was Jeff,” Koeppel said. “He was very smart and he knew how to woo people, how to schmooze. He’s personable and makes good company.”

Did Epstein purposely position himself at Dalton to get a foot on the ladder to jet-setting, celebrity-mingling, power-brokering high society?

“If that was his plan, it worked,” she said.

Epstein, now 66, started his job at the Dalton School at age 21 without a college degree and taught high school students only a few years younger than he was.

He was informal, friendly and liked to joke around, former students said. He was popular with female pupils, despite his puzzling personality.

“Epstein was considered a little creepy by the girls,” alumna Karin Williams said. “I won’t say that the girls didn’t like him. But they thought he was odd.”

Despite his short stint, Epstein left an impression.

“He’s the only man who I’ve ever met who had a full-length fur coat,” said Williams, who remembered the coat as Epstein’s flamboyant 1970s fashion statement at a school with a conservative dress code.

Student-teacher relationships were not unheard of at Dalton, former students said. It was a permissive time in the United States, and 40 years before #MeToo. However, no one who spoke to the Herald recalled Epstein engaging in a relationship or initiating unwanted physical contact with them.

“In retrospect, you could see how maybe he was looking for young nymphs,” said alumna Heidi Knecht-Seegers. “But I didn’t have a class with him and I was one of the few who didn’t drink or smoke or go to parties.”

Epstein — a math whiz as a kid — rose quickly at Bear Stearns, making partner by 1980 as reported in a 2002 New York Magazine profile. But while Epstein impressed traders and hedge fund managers, many of his students were less taken.

“To me he didn’t belong there,” said Maya Travaglia, who had Epstein for 10th grade math. “It just felt very unformed. He didn’t command the class.”

Joshua Persky, who graduated in 1977, had Epstein for physics.

“I thought he was okay,” Persky said. “Once in a while, he could not complete a complex homework problem, which I didn’t mind either.”

Peter Thomas Roth, who later founded an eponymous skin care company, described Epstein as an “amazing” physics teacher of his favorite class on Facebook. Epstein also tutored Roth in statistics to prepare him for the Wharton School at Penn.

Still, some kids complained to school administrators, Persky said.

“I think it was unusual that a school focused on quality education would hire a person with no experience and no college degrees, especially when the Dalton teachers we knew were excellent,” said E. Belvin Williams, a former Dalton trustee and associate dean of the Teachers College at Columbia University. “My hunch is he had contacts with parents or board members.”

By comparison, Travaglia noted, her geometry teacher was Yves Volel, an activist and Haitian presidential candidate who was assassinated in the late ’80s. Volel’s style was much more rigorous.

Ultimately, Epstein’s haphazard, uninspired teaching led to his dismissal after the 1975-76 school year, according to Peter Branch who was the head of the high school.

“It was determined that he had not adequately grown as a new teacher to the standard of the school,” Branch said.

The Dalton School is one of a group of New York private schools known for demanding academics. And like its peers, Dalton is expensive. Tuition in the mid-’70s was about $3,200 for upper school students. Today it’s over $50,000.

There’s a focus on the arts at Dalton. Notable alumni include Anderson Cooper, Claire Danes, Sean Lennon — the son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono — and a long list of actors, artists and musicians. Curriculum follows “the Dalton Plan,” which encourages each student to make his or her own educational choices.

The school offered a rich assortment of classes — 10 languages, including Russian; printmaking; jewelry-making; sculpture and drawing classes with nude models.

Persky performed modern dance with Jennifer Grey — “Baby” from “Dirty Dancing” — and Shauna Redford, daughter of Robert Redford.

Epstein arrived during a transition period for the Dalton School. The previous headmaster, Donald Barr, father of current Attorney General William Barr, quarreled with the board of trustees and resigned. Barr was a disciplinarian who clashed with the progressive parents.

“Donald Barr was a very authoritarian headmaster,” Karin Williams said.

Following Barr’s departure, T-shirts and sneakers were incorporated into the dress code. Blue jeans and “long male hair” were still prohibited, according to The Daltonian, the school’s newspaper. Travaglia remembers administrators measuring the length of girls’ skirts during the Barr years.

Barr left a semester before Epstein arrived and it’s unclear whether Barr had a hand in hiring him. Branch, who was interim headmaster, did not remember who hired him.

Apart from Epstein, Dalton has weathered a few of its own scandals in recent years. In 2013, a school email to boosters and donors included a confidential list of children who had been rejected. Gardner Dunnan, the headmaster who succeeded Barr, has been sued, accused of sexually assaulting a female student that he let stay in his apartment in 1986. The case has been transferred to the Southern District of New York, where Epstein is being prosecuted for alleged sex trafficking.

Epstein built a career making connections with the well connected. He got his start at Dalton and never moved far away. At Dalton, he was surrounded by the young girls he became fixated on as an alleged sexual predator, and schools became his preferred hunting ground.

His most recent accuser, Jennifer Araoz, said she was approached by one of Epstein’s recruiters when she was a 14-year-old freshman outside The Talent Unlimited High School on East 68th Street, a handful of blocks from his mansion. She was brought to him by a woman in her 20s who told her he was a caring man who could help her become an actress. He showed Araoz around his opulent townhouse with its super-sized decor of statues, taxidermy, leopard-print furniture and a Steinway grand piano, while white-gloved servants offered her wine and cheese, according to her court filings and an NBC interview. She was paid $300 for her visits until the day a massage in a special room with angels painted on the sky-blue ceiling turned into rape, Araoz said.

Her story mirrors those of other victims, who said he preyed on young teens who often had artistic aspirations He sought out insecure, vulnerable girls; prosecutors speculate there could be hundreds. Even Epstein’s friends remarked -- in flattering tones -- on how Epstein loved women and was frequently in the company of young women in New York, Palm Beach, at his Zorro Ranch in New Mexico or his private island in the Caribbean. His jet was nicknamed the “Lolita Express.”

At the Interlochen School for the Arts in Michigan, Epstein targeted 13-year-old Nadia Bjorlin, according to her mother, who told the Daily Mail that Epstein offered to be Nadia’s “godfather” and foster her singing career. Bjorlin’s mother, wary of Epstein and his aggressive assistant Ghislaine Maxwell, rejected his perverse proposal; Nadia went on to become a soap opera star.

Araoz and Bjorlin had both lost their fathers shortly before Epstein approached them.

Epstein, a talented pianist who attended Interlochen summer camp as a kid, donated $17,000 and a new cabin adjacent to the girls’ dorms to the school in the woods.

Epstein created a self portrait, framing himself as a wealthy party host, philanthropist and intellectual, donating money of uncertain origins from his foundations to arts organizations, scientists, Harvard University, the Santa Fe Institute think tank and cancer research funds.

He gave $180,000 to Ballet Florida in West Palm Beach, some of that earmarked for therapeutic massages.

The all-girls Hewitt School, located four blocks from his Manhattan mansion, received $15,000.

Epstein donated $75,000 to Dalton, springboard to the role he wanted to play.

The last time she saw her old teacher, a Dalton alumna recalled, Epstein was crossing Park Avenue at 71st Street with Woody Allen and his young wife, Soon-Yi Previn.

Miami Herald investigative reporter Nicholas Nehamas contributed to this report.

#u.s. news #politics #donald trump #politics and government #president donald trump #trump #us: news #international news #must reads #legal issues #world news #sex crimes #criminal-justice #corruption #united states department of justice #jeffrey epstein #sex trafficking

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djgblogger-blog · 6 years

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Why ignoring mental health needs of young Syrian refugees could harm us all

http://bit.ly/2noT1T9

A Syrian child drew a picture of helicopters dropping bombs and children dying as a result. The surviving children are crying, while the deceased ones have smiles on their faces. Zaher Sahloud, CC BY-SA

When a seven-year-old student in eastern Aleppo was asked at the peak of the bombardment campaign by the Assad regime in 2015 to draw a picture, he did not draw children playing, nor did he draw a blue sky or a smiling sun.

Instead, Ahmad drew helicopters dropping barrel bombs, houses blazing in fire and mutilated dead children in blood. In his drawing, the dead children had smiles on their faces, while those alive were in tears.

For this little boy, a pen and a paper were the only tools that enabled him to express his traumatic recollections of a childhood lost.

In Syria, its neighboring countries and all the way to Europe, there are millions of Syrian refugees and displaced individuals like Ahmad who have cried and will continue to cry without any opportunity to express their trauma, let alone receive any support and therapy to overcome the nightmares of war, loss and forced displacement.

The near-disappearance of Syria from the news does not mean that the war has ended. In just the first few months of 2017, more than 250,000 Syrians registered as refugees, bringing the number of Syrian refugees to more than 5.1 million. Fifteen Syrian refugees, including three children, have been found frozen to death in northern Lebanon. They lost their lives as they attempted to cross into Lebanon from neighboring Syria. All countries bordering on Syria have limited immigration, essentially closing their borders to refugees.

Now, seven years into the brutal Syrian crisis, the exact scale and impact of psychological trauma, mental health challenges and PTSD on both children and adults are not well-known, nor are they prioritized by local and international aid agencies, relief organizations and governments. But we know the psychological toll of the conflict is significant.

According to Ana Moughrabieh, a Syrian-American critical care specialist who continues to help fellow colleagues in Syria’s Idlib province via telemedicine, a new trend has emerged among women and teenagers. Every few days, one or two women and teens are admitted to the local hospital after a suicide attempt by ingesting insecticides. The insecticide is known locally as “gas pill” and leads to multiple organ failures, causing a painful and slow death.

As a doctor who spent the last six years providing medical relief in Syria, I believe that the world should pay attention to the future of Syria by lending a healing hand to its traumatized children. If we don’t, we will have to face the ugly and unpredictable consequences in the years ahead.

Mental health not a priority

In the north, more than 220,000 civilians have became displaced in Idlib province in the past few weeks after an orchestrated campaign by Assad troops and Russian jets. There are 2.5 million people in Idlib, half of them internally displaced from other cities.

In the south, 17 patients, children among them, died while awaiting evacuation from besieged Ghouta. More than 400,000 civilians are still under siege by their own government for the sixth consecutive year. The regime continued to bomb civilian areas with conventional and sometimes chlorine bombs. Every day there is a new list of dead civilians and children that no one pays attention to except for the local activists. To many Syrians, there is a sense that the world has deserted Syrians.

The resulting depression, PTSD, suicidal tendencies, severe aggression and other mental illnesses that result from these horrors are invisible wounds that are not being detected early enough, let alone treated efficiently, in Syria and beyond. The longer they go untreated, the more amplified are the impacts.

Mental illness remains a taboo across the world, especially in Syria and the Middle East where patients and their families are afraid to seek treatment fearing that they will be labeled as crazy, or “Majnoon” in Arabic.

Often these people are shunned by their communities and spend their lives struggling with minimal support. There is only one operating mental health hospital in Syria where people with acute psychiatric conditions are treated.

Even before the crisis, mental hospitals were more like prisons than real hospitals. There were only two public psychiatric hospitals. One is located in a rural area outside Damascus but now operates with limited capacity because of security concerns. The second one, in Aleppo, has closed.

In the neighboring countries of Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon that are host to over five million Syrian refugees, psychosocial support and psychiatric care are predominantly privatized. The situation is compounded by a severe shortage of psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers.

M.K. Hamza, a Syrian-American psychiatrist who volunteered in multiple medical missions to Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Greece, described a new syndrome to illustrate the extreme psychological trauma that affects Syrian children. In 2016, he called this human devastation syndrome. According to the same report, more than 45 percent of Syrian children refugees suffer from PTSD, and many suffer from other mental health problems like depression and anxiety.

Other aspects of psychological trauma

Many of these young people are at high risk of becoming drug addicts, prostitutes and extremists themselves. There are even reports of criminal organ trafficking and illegal adoptions run by international gangs preying on vulnerable Syrian children.

In Lebanon, a small country of five million that’s now home to over 1.5 million Syrian refugees, 16-year-old Abed is among the very few Syrians who receive therapy and counseling from a local nongovernmental organization called Art of Hope that helps alleviate PTSD and trauma through art therapy and vocational training. Art of Hope tries to bring some level of normalcy, dignity and belonging to Syrian children by engaging them in activities like art and craft workshops and addressing their emotional trauma.

According to Tara Kangarlou, the founder of the organization, the teenager was forced to witness beheadings in his hometown of Raqqa, where ISIS also amputated his hand. Abed currently suffers from depression, guilt and aggressive tendencies. During one of the therapy sessions, Abed told his counselor that it may be better if he returns home to join ISIS – expressing remorse that perhaps it was his fault that ISIS amputated his hand.

Addressing mental health in age of IS

As the number of out-of-school children looms both inside Syria and in host countries, these invisible wounds won’t be healed unless large humanitarian groups and U.N. agencies team up with local and grassroots organizations inside Syria and out. They need to address the mental health and public health challenges in parallel with educational programming.

In the absence of adequate leadership and security, I believe terrorist groups will fill gaps and prey on vulnerable recruits. They do so by providing these children and teens with basic necessities, but most importantly a sense of dignity, belonging and purpose.

I believe that treating these wounds would be an investment that will pay in the form of counterextremism and reduction of conflict and hostility. An absence of treatment is damaging to the children and also to society.

Nations could also develop telemedicine counseling to fill the gap. On a grassroots level, host countries should engage in training of local trainers and empowering Syrians to detect early signs of depression, anxiety and suicidal tendencies.

In spite of the overwhelming trauma, Syrian children are so resilient. They smile, play and adapt quickly in the refugee camps and even under siege. The same child who drew a picture of death and bombs will be drawing flowers, rivers, butterflies and happy faces after a few sessions of art therapy. He can grow up to become a doctor, a teacher, an engineer or even a president. It is incumbent on us to provide him with that chance.

M. Zaher Sahloul is a senior adviser and past president of the Syrian American Medical Association.

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