"Trauma in Palestine is collective and continuous. PTSD is when your mind is stuck in a traumatic loop. In Palestine, the loop is reality." Dr Samah Jabr

Children stand amid the rubble of a building hit by an Israeli air strike in the centre of the Gaza Strip. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

 

‘Chronic traumatic stress disorder’: the Palestinian psychiatrist challenging western definitions of trauma

Chair of the Palestinian ministry of health’s mental health unit says the clinical definition of PTSD does not fit the reality in Gaza

Even before the war in Gaza broke out, people in the besieged Palestinian territory had some of the world’s worst rates of mental illness.

Israel and Egypt’s blockade of the Mediterranean strip is now 17 years old; a generation has grown up knowing nothing but cyclical escalation, a dire lack of public services and next to no freedom of movement. Research published by Save the Children in 2022 found that four out of five children in Gaza said they live with depression, grief and fear, and three in five were self harming.

Since 7 October, the charity found that there has – unsurprisingly – been a dramatic deterioration in children’s mental health. “Children here have seen everything,” one father, Wasseem, told Save the Children researchers. “They’ve seen the bombs, the deaths, the bodies … We can’t pretend to them any more. Now, my son can even tell what types of explosives are falling.”... READ MORE   https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/14/mental-health-palestine-children

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