Mental health epidemic in UAE prompts concerns over its ‘nanny culture’ 

The UAE’s “nanny culture”, where parents tend to employ a maid to look after babies during the early years, is said to be fuelling a mental health epidemic, a leading psychologist has warned.

Dr Sandra Willis, an adviser to Abu Dhabi’s Department of Community Development, raised concerns over this common practice across Gulf countries during the launch of an initiative to improve mental well-being services and to promote a culture of openness about psychological issues.

“Attachment is really key, particularly for young children, in their first year of life,” Willis, a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York, is reported saying in the event organised by the government agency Ma’an. “This is where it starts, but this is where we tend to hand off our babies to others, because all they need is feeding, changing, sleeping, right? Actually all the science opposes that,” she added.

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Willis went on to explain the importance of the early years to developing the kind of attachment between parents and child that is required to reduce the risk of mental health problems at the latter stages of a person’s life.  She warned about the culture of getting contracted nannies to look after children.

“I do feel it impedes secure, long-term attachment,” she is reported saying in UAE media sources. “We all know nannies are on a contract, it’s cyclical, they will leave. So what happens with children when their principal carer, to which they are attached, leaves? That’s assuming there is a positive attachment with the outsourced help.”

Willis touched on what has become a sensitive issue across the Gulf by claiming that mistreatment of nannies could result in harm to the children under their care. “You need to treat that domestic worker well, with kindness, compensate them appropriately, give them leave to rest and do their jobs effectively,” she said. “Often if you’re overworked, and it’s not your child… it’s a challenge even if it is your own child to maintain positive and healthy relationships, explained Willis.

Social start-up initiatives with ideas to improve mental well-being among residents is being encouraged by Ma’an who announced that it would offer more than Dh2 million ($544,498) to support plans to address mental health problems.

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In Gulf states, domestic work is the largest sector of employment for female migrants, driven by a higher standard of living since the 1970s oil boom and increasing female workforce participation among nationals.

Even so, female domestic workers are perhaps the least protected workers, facing legal, institutional and societal barriers to basic securities.

The kafala system, in which foreign workers must be sponsored by an employer, renders domestic workers unable to escape abusive situations until their contract expires, at risk of being reported to authorities and subsequently fined, jailed or deported.