By Semir Sejfovic
SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina (AA) - The warnings have been clear: millions of Palestinians are living through catastrophic conditions in the Gaza Strip as Israel continues its relentless violence on a besieged enclave described by many as “hell on earth.”
The death and destruction Israel has wreaked in Gaza is out there for all to see, with more than 37,000 Palestinians now killed in over eight months and nearly 85,000 more injured, an overwhelming majority of them women and children.
But there is an entire other side to it all hidden from the world: the psychological impact.
Before Israel launched its deadly war in October, Palestinians were already facing a mental health crisis due to Israel’s violent and relentless oppression.
A November 2022 study by the World Bank and other organizations found that over half of the adult population of Palestinians screened positive for depression – 71% for Gaza and 58% for the occupied West Bank.
For children, a UNICEF report this February said over 500,000 children in Gaza needed mental health support before last October, and that figure has since risen to more than 1 million – almost all of Gaza’s children.
As Israel rains down death and destruction on Gaza, organizations like Doctors Without Borders have even coined a new term to identify children without surviving family members: WCNSF – wounded child, no surviving family.
All of this is by design and part of Israel’s “psychology of occupation,” according to Dr. Iman Farajallah, a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology based in California.
“I think it’s really important to understand how the psychology of occupation works. We cannot just only overlook the years of occupation that Palestinians have actually experienced for 75 years, and I think what Israel has done for so many years is basically to create a traumatized nation all through their policies against Palestinians,” she told Anadolu.
“They are trying to create a traumatized nation that cannot stand up for themselves and cannot actually ask for liberation or self-determination or for their own state.”
- Gaza’s children suffering ‘complex continuous trauma’
When it comes to the trauma of children in the Gaza Strip, Farajallah explained that they face what is known as “complex continuous trauma,” a term referring to prolonged and repeated exposure to traumatic events.
“Palestinian children have been suffering for so many years, generations after generations ... The trauma they are experiencing is continuous, 24/7. They are in Gaza … a big jail or open-air prison and on the top of that, there is continuous bombing all the time. They have no escape,” she said.
This relentless trauma manifests in different forms, ranging from depression to impacts on cognitive abilities, she explained.
“The symptoms that Palestinian children have suffered can be placed in four categories. The first one is behavioral signs, the second cognitive signs, then emotional signs, and the fourth and the last one is the physical signs,” she said.
“They have symptoms like depression and anxiety. They have nightmares when they sleep … They have difficulties to leave the side of their parents or comply with house orders. They have flashbacks all the time and they wake up in the night screaming, and they have avoidance behaviors.”
These children are living with the constant fear of losing their parents or having something else happen to them, she said.
“In terms of their cognitive signs, a lot of them suffer from confusion and lack of concentration,” said the psychologist.
She said many mothers have told her that their child was good at school before, for example, the war of 2014, but after it “because of the trauma, a lot of them lack the ability to succeed in school.”
- ‘People around the world are also being affected’
Israel’s deadly violence against Palestinians and the brutalities of its ongoing war are psychologically impacting people all around the world, who are seeing a constant stream of graphic images and stories of immense pain and suffering, said Farajallah.
She emphasized that “secondhand trauma is no different than firsthand trauma.”
“The way that people in Palestine are being afflicted is, of course, stronger … but people around the world are also being affected, and symptoms like depression, anxiety, stress can occur with all individuals who actually experience secondhand trauma,” she explained.
“Watching secondhand trauma constantly, live in front of our own eyes, it is going to impact us psychologically, physically, and emotionally. There is no doubt in that and the only escape would be if choose to close your eyes or shut down your TV, your social media and to isolate yourself,” she said.
“However, I don’t think anybody seeing these atrocities and the genocide that is happening in Gaza can close their eyes.”
All of this is going to affect people in the long run and “have a very, very negative effect on their psychology,” she warned.