Morgan Laffer, Syria’s Silent Wards (DOCO 2026)

After fourteen years of civil war and more than five decades of authoritarian rule, millions of Syrians are living with profound psychological trauma. Mental health remains largely unspoken, chronically underfunded, and treated as a secondary concern rather than a public health emergency. Decades of repression, mass detention, displacement, and sustained violence have left deep psychological wounds that few institutions are equipped to address. At the centre of this crisis is Ibn Sina Psychiatric Hospital in Douma, one of the few remaining facilities in Syria still treating severe mental illness. Once occupied by the Syrian Army and used as a frontline military base, the hospital bears lasting physical and psychological scars of the war. Parts of the compound remain damaged, with unexploded ordnance still present. Many patients are former detainees, survivors of torture, or repeatedly displaced civilians whose trauma has gone untreated for years. Operating under severe constraints, Ibn Sina continues to function under rudimentary conditions that echo the grim legacy of institutional psychiatric wards of the past— places of incarceration and confinement rather than cure and hope. Yet despite these constraints, Ibn Sina endures as a fragile lifeline for Syria’s most psychologically vulnerable.

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