Mental health in conflict and war zones, with psychiatrist and conflict medicine expert Joseph El-Khoury

Joseph El-Khoury grew up in Lebanon at the height of the Civil War in that country from the mid-70s to 1990, which killed over 100,000 people. With firsthand experience of war trauma, he decided to become a psychiatrist, studied and worked in the west and returned to his country to help his people. He trained himself in conflict medicine, and worked with refugees from neighbouring Syria, who fled the Syrian war. But then, in 2020, El-Khoury had to leave his home country again in the wake of a severe political and economic collapse. As someone who understands what it means to live in a troubled country, Joseph El-Khoury, who is a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK, has powerful perspectives on the flawed assumptions people from the outside looking in tend to make about the words 'conflict' and 'war'. In this episode, he talks about the intriguing world of 'conflict psychiatry', the limitations of how we conventionally understand the idea of PTSD, and the possibility of hope.