‘Second chance at life’: This rehabilitation center provides mental health care to orphaned children in Iraq [Video]

At the Luminous Stars center in Baghdad, families in need arrive every month to collect financial assistance. 

While they’re there, mental health care workers take the opportunity to assess the children, many of whom have been traumatized by decades of war in the country — and have suffered the loss of one or both parents. 

“Children who come to Luminous Stars, they are basically given a second chance at life,” said Kawther Hamed, a volunteer doctor at the center, in a video posted online. “These children, generally, if you’re in a state where you are quite traumatized or affected to a severe degree by the circumstances that you are in, you may be neglected, you may be overlooked by society just because it’s too complex to deal with.”

According to a 2021 reportby the Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights, there are 5 million orphaned children in the country. That number includes those who …