Psychiatry, ethnicity and migration : the case of Palestine, 1920-1948

The aim of the paper is to explore the development of psychiatry in Palestine from two main perspectives: ethnicity and immigration. In Palestine the subject of immigration and psychiatry were highly complicated and had unique features. Thus, both psychiatrists and patients were immigrants who belonged to the same ethnic group sharing the same ideology and objectives. The examination will uncover the social construction of mental diseases among Jewish immigrants in Palestine —patients and psychiatrists— and elucidate another layer in the development of the Zionist Jewish society in Palestine up to the establishment of the State of Israel.