Healing Mental Trauma: TechMed’s Virtual Reality Lifeline In Gaza
Gaza: Rital al-Dahdouh, an innocent girl in Gaza, had a narrow escape from a bombing in her tent on the second day of Eid. She is now all alone in a hospital with severe injuries and burns, with her mother and brothers killed and her father and 9-month-old sister injured in the Israeli offensives.
Dahdouh has been facing serious mental health challenges, according to the doctors who are treating her. She even refuses to talk to the healthcare workers but only points out the injuries she suffered. The doctors have not informed her about the deaths of her loved ones.
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“Her psychological state is very difficult, she refuses to speak, eat, or play,” says Abdul Rahman, Dahdouh’s uncle. Like Dahdouh, there are many children in Gaza, physically escaped from the Israeli strikes but mentally traumatised, hesitating to engage with the world.
A relief for such kids, TechMed Gaza, founded in April 2024 by Mosab Emad Ali, has been helping to heal the mental traumas of the war-stricken Gazans through a virtual reality software. A virtual reality (VR) has been operated by the team to improve the mental health of these helpless victims of the ongoing genocide. TechMed conducted virtual reality therapy sessions for Dahdouh, and the therapist could finally earn the child’s trust after two sessions. Following the third session, her uncle and the therapist informed her of the death of her mother and brothers.
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The 29- year-old electrical engineer, Mosab Emad Ali, also an entrepreneur, is the hand behind TechMed. Founded on October 7, 2023, the enterprise initially focused on gaming and educational software for children with special needs. However, after the war broke out, Emad Ali changed his organisation’s goal to addressing the mental health issues of the devastated victims through VR headsets and mobile technology.
“Just like any entrepreneur, you adapt your ideas to the needs of the moment. So I took the idea of gaming and connected it to mental health because that’s where the need is. “Children are suffering, and we must do all that we can with what we have to benefit them,” said Mosab in an interview with Middle East Monitor.
Mosab built a small tent outside AL Aqsa Hospital in Deir el- Balah to kickstart his mission after his seven- year-old son Amin was seriously injured in an airstrike. As Amin shifted to Egypt for treatment due to his psychological trauma, Mosab developed what he knows best, VR technology. When he saw his son smiling while exploring lush, peaceful landscapes through the VR experience he created, Mosab had a realization. “I realized that if it could help my son, it could help so many other children here who are suffering,” he says.
Techmed’s VR technology mainly treats post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in injured people. According to UNRWA, since October 2023, more than 4,000 amputations and 2,000 cases of spinal and brain injuries have been recorded. Children are majorly affected by it as the trauma of losing limbs and loved ones is compounded by nightmares and social withdrawal. Adults face similar struggles, trapped in an endless cycle of grief and survival.
Techmed has conducted over 50 successful cases where many children and adults have healed from their traumas and started to respond to doctors, according to Mosab. They managed to heal to the extent that the victims accepted their injuries and amputations as well as the loss of their beloved.
Amid ongoing challenges, including the destruction of the facility’s treatment tent at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, TechMed continues to offer vital mental health support across Gaza. In partnership with The Sameer Project, the organization now delivers remote, personalized VR therapy plans tailored to each patient’s psychological needs, proving that even in the face of war, innovation and resilience can bring healing.
(This story is part of a Timeline internship project)
