In Memoriam Gamal Mady Abou El Azayem, 1917-1999
Gamal Mady Abou El Azayem , chairman of the 1987 World Congress for Mental Health in Cairo and WFMH president, 1987-1989, died in Cairo after a short illness on 4 December 1999. He was 82 years old.
Dr. El Azayem was born in Cairo in June of 1917. He was educated at Cairo University and the mental health centers in Cairo, Giza and Sharkia. He achieved prominence in Egyptian psychiatry as superintendent of his countrys largest mental hospital, the Abbassya in Cairo, as a university lecturer and later chairman of the department of psychiatry of El Azhar University, and as a consultant to the Egyptian Ministry of Justice. He was an early member of the Egyptian Association for Mental Health formed in 1948 and later became its long-time secretary. His 1968 discussion with then WFMH President Morris Carstairs contributed to the idea of organizing the first Pan Arab Congress on mental health in Cairo in 1969 of which he was the secretary general.
Dr. El Azayems international experience outside the Arab world prior to his work with WFMH began with a 1954 WHO fellowship in Europe. It went on to include a 1973 WHO consultancy on drug dependence, and membership on the 1977 WHO expert advisory panel on drug dependence. In 1978 he was principal investigator of a joint United States-Egypt project on the voluntary treatment of opium dependence.
We first met when we both became members of the WFMH Board during the Salzburg World Congress in 1979. However, our close relationship began during the 1981 Manila Congress when it was my privilege to assist him during a brief illness. He never forgot this and our friendship continued throughout his subsequent WFMH career. As WFMH president it was my honor to invite him to deliver the Mary Hemingway Rees lecture on spiritual factors in mental health at the 1983 World Congress in Washington, D.C.. His topic was The Mosque as a Mental Health Center. This event attracted delegates from many Arab and Islamic nations to the Congress and accelerated the formation of the World Islamic Association for Mental Health. It also paved the way for several visits to Egypt by my wife and myself during which we came to know the entire El Azayem family including the late Madame El Azayem, Nadia, and their eldest son, our present WFMH president, Ahmed. In addition to deepening our knowledge of Gamals personal philosophy, we learned about the El Azayem psychiatric hospital and mental health center, and became acquainted with the work of the El Azayem mosque in the old district of Cairo.
A major consequence of our collaboration was increasing regional interest in WFMH and mental health matters in general. This encouraged Dr. El Azayem to suggest that a WFMH World Congress be held in Cairo. The 1984 Board meeting at the Sheppard Pratt Hospital in Baltimore accepted his official bid for the 1987 Congress. He was subsequently nominated as WFMH president-elect, to take office during the Cairo Congress. That Congress owed its success in part to the effective organization of Ahmed who, from that time on, was a well known figure in WFMH. One of its features was a symposium on conflict resolution and the prevention of community violence organized by Dr. Leila F. Dane of the Institute for Victims of Trauma in the United States. This led to Gamals enduring interest in the subject, carried forward in a series of conferences in Cairo, and to the formation of an international Joint Project on Conflict Resolution.
His term as WFMH president was also marked by the increasing involvement of Arab and Islamic countries in the affairs of the Federation. It saw the celebration, in Luxor and on the Nile, of the Federations 40th anniversary which was marked by the first issuance of the WFMH Declaration of Mental Health and Human Rights. At his request I presented it to the 1988 anniversary gathering where it was adopted by acclamation as The Declaration of Luxor. Later, with the collaboration of Ahmed, he founded and served as the first chair of the Eastern Mediterranean Regional Council of the WFMH and also of the Arab Federation of NGOs for the primary prevention of substance abuse–the first regional body developed under the guidelines of the UN Drug Control Program (after a UNDCP meeting in Bangkok).
Those who knew Gamal El Azayem will recall not only his professional contributions, but the essential sweetness of his personality and the authenticity of his religious and philosophical convictions. They also recall his devotion to his family and join those who survive him in mourning his loss.
-Eugene B. Brody