Bandages, gauze, sterile eye dressings — these are some standard supplies you can expect to find in a first aid kit. But what about tools to help mend the mental and emotional wounds people suffer during traumatic experiences?

After traveling to Greece to help Syrian refugees during the height of the refugee crisis, child psychiatrist Essam Daod came to the realization that, just as it’s important to treat physical wounds as quickly as possible, tending to psychic injuries is also an urgent matter.

“I think that we have this very short window of opportunity — what I call the “golden hour” — that we can really do the intervention before the, you know, [traumatic] experience can be stored and imprinted in the brain, especially for kids.”

In 2015, Daod and his wife started Humanity Crew, an organization that has so far provided more than 32,000 hours of free mental health services to refugees in the Mediterranean. The organization does its best to reframe traumatic experiences for people when it makes sense to do so — for example, helping a young refugee boy who survived a dangerous ocean journey to see himself as a strong and capable hero. This can nudge the mind to store memories as positive experiences instead of traumatic ones.

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About Dr. Essam Daod:

Essam is a psychiatrist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist who grew up in Israel in a small Arab Palestinian village in the Galilee. He specialized in child and adolescent psychiatry and graduated from psychoanalytic school. In 2015, he flew to Greece for a humanitarian rescue mission where he co-founded Humanity Crew and has been working with refugees ever since. Humanity Crew specializes in the provision of psychological aid to refugees and people in crises, working to deploy mental health and psycho social support to displaced populations in order to improve their wellbeing, to restore order in their lives, and to prevent further psychological escalation. Currently, he is an avid refugee mental health activist and researcher who has spoken at countless conferences and media outlets all over the world advocating for the importance of mental health support for refugees. In 2016 Essam and Humanity Crew were awarded "The Defenders of Refugee Rights Award" at the 4th Edition of Cities Defending Human Rights in Barcelona. In 2018, he became a WHO mental health expert team member, and a TED Fellow.

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