What Is Mental Health, Really? A Psychologist on Why Arab Families Wait Too Long to Seek Help
- Sarah El Nabulsi, M.Sc., M.A., M.A.
- Jul 9
- 5 min read
MBC1 — FI OSBOU3A · October 16, 2021
Ms. Sarah El Nabulsi, M.Sc., M.A., M.A., DHA Licensed Clinical Psychologist, joined MBC1's Fi Osbou3a to answer a question that sounds simple but rarely gets a clear answer: what is mental health, actually — and why do so many people in our communities wait until something goes seriously wrong before they take it seriously?
Mental Health Is a Spectrum, Not a Switch
Before discussing why mental health matters, the reporter asked me to define it. I explained that mental health exists on a spectrum. At one end, a person is consistently able to achieve their goals, feels genuine gratitude for their life, and experiences sustained wellbeing. At the other end are people who are struggling — psychologically and emotionally unable to meet their goals or manage the ordinary challenges life puts in front of them. Almost everyone sits somewhere between those two poles, and where a person sits can shift.
What I see constantly in my practice here in the UAE is that Arabic-speaking clients come to therapy very late — sometimes as individuals, sometimes as couples — after years of struggling silently. By the time they arrive, their prognosis is significantly harder, because the condition has had years to entrench itself. This is exactly why general awareness matters: the more familiar we are with what mental health actually looks like, and what specific disorders look like, the faster we can recognise them in ourselves or the people we love, and act before things escalate.
To put the scale of this in perspective: research has long put the lifetime risk of experiencing a depressive episode at roughly one in six people — a figure that is still widely cited today by organisations including the American Psychological Association. Globally, both depression and anxiety have historically been estimated at around 5% of the adult population according to WHO figures — and more recent Global Burden of Disease data, which puts global anxiety and depression cases at roughly 359 million and 332 million respectively, lands in a very similar range once you account for global population growth. In other words: this isn't a rare or fringe issue. Statistically, it touches nearly every extended family.
What Happens When Teenage Depression Goes Untreated
One of the points I wanted to be clear about is what's actually at stake when we don't intervene early — particularly during adolescence, a formative period for brain development.
If a teenager is experiencing a depressive episode during these formative years and it goes unaddressed, they don't just "get through it." They miss important developmental windows: motivation drops, consistency drops, and the patterns of inconsistency and low motivation begin to build into the brain's developing pathways. Left untreated, depression and anxiety can shape how the brain organises itself during this critical window, and the person can develop an inaccurate, biased self-image that they then carry forward. This matters more in the teenage years specifically because the effects reflect across the entire lifespan, not just the adolescent period itself.
What Actually Protects Mental Health
The reporter asked what we can do, practically, to protect our own mental health. My answer had several parts.
First, general literacy about mental health disorders and their common symptoms — including personality disorders. Recognising the traits of something like narcissistic personality types, for example, isn't just clinically interesting; it helps you steer clear of relationships and dynamics that can do real harm.
Second, the basics that people already know matter but often deprioritise: diet, exercise, and physical routine all influence mental health directly.
Third — and this is something I emphasise heavily in my own practice — the ability to sit in stillness with yourself. I see this missing constantly, even in religious practice: people pray and then get up immediately, without ever training the capacity to simply be still with themselves. Developing this self-referral awareness is something I work on with clients using Transcendental Meditation specifically, because it trains the mind to access that stillness directly rather than treating it as an abstract idea.
Fourth, the quality of our relationships. So much of our socialising today happens with a phone in hand — a kind of divided attention that prevents the depth human beings actually need from connection. Genuine interest in another person, and the depth that comes from undistracted conversation, is not a luxury. It's part of what allows us to explore what's happening internally and help the people around us do the same.
Updating Belief Systems Without Losing Yourself
The reporter pushed further: given everything we'd discussed, doesn't this mean we need to revisit not just our habits, but our belief systems — even our laws — as a society?
I agreed, but with an important caveat. As human beings, we should always be updating our belief systems as our awareness and knowledge expand — we shouldn't just update our phones. But in my experience, highly conservative individuals are often deeply afraid to revisit their belief systems, and for good reason from their perspective: a belief system functions like a pillar of personality. Shake it too hard, too fast, and something can genuinely collapse — experienced as loss, disorientation, distress, and a cluster of other symptoms. This is why I approach that process very delicately in clinical work.
What I encourage instead is developing critical thinking as a deliberate skill — in ourselves and the people we love. Too often, important conversations get shut down entirely with a single word like "haram" or "taboo," rather than engaged with. That avoidance doesn't make the underlying issue disappear — the new generation is living in a genuinely different world, and the gap between generations keeps widening. We need to become fluent in having these harder conversations if we want to stay grounded in our identity and cultural values while navigating rapid global change — not by avoiding the conversation, but by having it well.
Self-Respect Starts in Childhood — and So Does Authentic Confidence
Finally, I addressed the relationship a person has with themselves. Real self-respect typically develops in childhood, and parents play a direct role in building it — not through insults, but through encouragement and by genuinely consulting children on important matters in an age-appropriate way. I see a pattern across generations here: in the Arab world, this kind of consultation was rarely practised in previous generations, and many of those children, now parents themselves, have swung to the opposite extreme — giving children input and authority well beyond their maturity level. The goal is balance: empowerment calibrated to a child's actual maturity, without a parent abandoning their role as leader.
The last thing I wanted to leave the audience with is this: we are always evaluating ourselves, both in isolation and against other people and our own history — and a lack of real achievement will affect how we see ourselves, regardless of how much encouragement we receive. Authentic confidence comes from actions taken and goals actually achieved. It is not built from praise alone, however well-intentioned that praise from teachers, family, or loved ones might be.
About Ms. Sarah El Nabulsi
Ms. Sarah El Nabulsi, M.Sc., M.A., M.A. is a DHA Licensed Clinical Psychologist (License No. DHA-75083705) based in Dubai, and UAE Director of the Transcendental Meditation Organization. She has been featured on MBC, MBC1, Sky News Arabia, Dubai TV, and BBC Arabic, and is the founder of the online courses Anxiety 101 (Level 1) and Master Yourself (Level 2).
Comments