Egyptian mental health ambassador spreads the word on self-care to an Arab audience online
When it comes to mental health in the region, few voices have reached such volumes as Ally Salama’s. The region’s first self-proclaimed mental health ambassador may only be 24 years old, but Salama’s social work has brought him before a United Nations Development Programme assembly to discuss the importance of mental health in the Mena region, and his digital agency, EMPWR House, has been endorsed by Harvard University.
While his professional life is well documented, his personal backstory remains uncharted. Born into an upper-class family in Egypt, Salama began his life at the top of the socio-economic food chain, attending one of Cairo’s most prestigious schools and training at its most highly regarded sporting clubs.
When he was about 8, his father’s business went bankrupt. “That changed our life, it really did,” says Salama. Soon after, his father moved the family to the UK with a view to working and living there, while pursuing a PhD. It was in the UK that Salama had his first brushes with depression, as he faced serious bullying in his new school.
The move to a new country also took a heavy toll on his mother, who did not adjust well, especially after she received news that her father had been diagnosed with stage-3 cancer and given a year to live. While Salama’s father stayed in the UK, he and his mother returned to Egypt to care for his sick grandfather, but he would go on to lose both his maternal grandparents within two years.
“I have a lot of respect for my father, but we were never really that close; he was sort of emotionally unavailable, always busy with his work,” says Salama.
As he helped his mother to grieve, Salama began developing traits that he describes as instrumental to the social work he is known for today: empathy, supportiveness and an aptitude for leadership. “I see myself as a pretty strong guy, but there are things in life that will shatter you no matter what, but these are the things that make you stronger in the end,” he says.
Today, Salama is the host of the Empathy Always Wins podcast, which he describes as “an intersection between mental health and leadership”.
His agency produces online content with an Arab audience in mind, who, because of taboos surrounding mental health, may not always be comfortable admitting they have a problem.
In his father’s absence, he found the paternal support he was looking for in his family’s driver, Abdel Ghany, who introduced him to a side of
Egypt that many upper-class children don’t get to experience. A more thrilling, dangerous side. “Abdel Ghany has since died, which was really tough for me. He was like my dad; he was the guy I was safe with, you know,” says Salama.
The family’s long-loved supporter, Wagida, who had been with his grandmother since before his mother was born, was also an influential figure in his life.
Salama explains that it was his experiences with Egypt’s lower classes that gave him the insight to make the content he produces today.
“I love Egypt, I’m very patriotic. Everything I have been doing was aimed at making this country better,” says Salama, who now splits his time living in Dubai and Toronto.
Another important father figure in his life is Dr Nasser Loza, president-elect of the World Federation for Mental Health and a consulting psychiatrist at Cairo’s prestigious Behman Hospital. Salama credits his professional success to Loza’s mentorship.
Taking care of yourself is an important cornerstone of Salama’s philosophy today because, as he explains, he knows what it feels like to not look after your own needs, and the problems that can arise from that.
He also says that a vital part of fending for yourself is finding healthy outlets for your negative feelings. For him, it was singing that helped him through a tumultuous personal life. He began taking the hobby
Ally Salama’s social enterprise EMPWR House has been endorsed by Harvard University
more seriously when he was 15 years old, while attending high school in Canada, another period in his life that he describes as “bittersweet”, because even though it was where he started singing, which he is passionate about, it was also where he lived with his worst bouts of depression.
“I was alone, without a support system. I thought a lot about suicide during this time,” he says. However, Salama is now able to look back at those tough times with gratitude, because in 2016, while in Canada, he started the Break the Silence Facebook page, an anonymous platform through which Egyptians could share their mental health experiences without having to reveal their identities.
The platform was lauded and amassed 80,000 followers on Facebook, catapulting Salama into the spotlight.
Today, he is much more open, a quality that has served him well in his career. Case in point: in 2019, he entered an influencer marketing campaign with EgyptAir, which amassed a million organic views across all social platforms in a week.
In the same year, his second campaign, #PeopleToPeople, snagged the Middle East’s Best Promotional Film award from the World Tourism Organisation.
Both campaigns were collaborative efforts, and proof that Salama has come a long way from being that shy, displaced child who took on more burdens than he could carry. Today, he is a charismatic leader who isn’t afraid to be vulnerable.
“I am in the business of selling you back to you,” he says. “Because the most daring person you can be in your life, is yourself.”