NEW YORK (JTA) — Victor Sanua, a pioneer in cross-cultural studies of mental illness, has died.
Sanua, who is also known for his studies on American Jewish communities and the Jews of Egypt, died last week of renal failure in Brooklyn. He was 88.
He published hundreds of articles, often focusing on familial and cultural factors in mental illness. He was a past president of the International Council of Psychologists, and a founder and past vice president of the Interamerican Society of Psychology.
Sanua was born in 1920 to a Sephardic Jewish family in Cairo and immigrated to the United States in 1950. He received his doctorate from Michigan State University in 1956 and was a research professor in the psychology department at St. John’s University in New York.
In retirement, Sanua focused on retrieving the heritage of the Egyptian Jewish community and published his book, "Egyptian Jewry: A Guide to Egyptian Jewry in the Mid-Twentieth Century."
