Michel Murr, Lebanon’s oldest member of parliament, died on Sunday from coronavirus-related complications. He was 89, Lebanon's National News Agency reported.
Murr, who was first elected as an MP in 1968, served for three decades in a row since 1992.
After the end of the country’s civil war in the early 90s, he held several government posts while serving as deputy prime minister from 1992 to 2000.
Throughout his 60-year-long political career, Murr was appointed to lead several ministries, including the interior, defence and telecom portfolios.
In 2004, he was elected as deputy parliament speaker. He served in the post until the 2005 parliamentary elections, which followed the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri, the business tycoon credited with rebuilding Beirut after the civil war.
Hariri's assassination pressured Syria to withdraw its military forces from Lebanon after three decades of dominating the country’s political landscape.
The Syrian military withdrawal paved the way for traditional Christian leaderships to dominate the domestic political landscape once again, denying Murr, a Greek Orthodox, a role in the executive branch.
His death brings the total number of lawmakers in Lebanon’s 128-member parliament to 119 after eight MPs resigned in August following the Beirut port explosion that killed more than 200 people.
The resigned MPs said the blast, that involved the explosion of a large stockpile of chemicals that was kept at the port for more than six years, capped decades of corruption and negligence.
Since then, Lebanon remains without a fully functioning Cabinet despite economic and financial crises.
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Anxiety and work stress major factors
Anxiety, work stress and social isolation are all factors in the recogised rise in mental health problems.
A study UAE Ministry of Health researchers published in the summer also cited struggles with weight and illnesses as major contributors.
Its authors analysed a dozen separate UAE studies between 2007 and 2017. Prevalence was often higher in university students, women and in people on low incomes.
One showed 28 per cent of female students at a Dubai university reported symptoms linked to depression. Another in Al Ain found 22.2 per cent of students had depressive symptoms - five times the global average.
It said the country has made strides to address mental health problems but said: “Our review highlights the overall prevalence of depressive symptoms and depression, which may long have been overlooked."
Prof Samir Al Adawi, of the department of behavioural medicine at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman, who was not involved in the study but is a recognised expert in the Gulf, said how mental health is discussed varies significantly between cultures and nationalities.
“The problem we have in the Gulf is the cross-cultural differences and how people articulate emotional distress," said Prof Al Adawi.
“Someone will say that I have physical complaints rather than emotional complaints. This is the major problem with any discussion around depression."
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