vinegarIsraeli Nearly nine months into the siege, the death toll and destruction in the Gaza Strip has been enormous, with at least 37,834 people killed and 86,858 injured. As of March, an estimated 157,200 buildings in the Gaza Strip had been destroyed – nearly half of all buildings in the Strip, including homes and key infrastructure.
Tensions in the region were taking a toll on Palestinian mental health long before the recent escalation began. In 2022, a joint effort by the World Bank, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, and other organizations found that more than half of Palestinian adults in the West Bank and Gaza Strip suffer from depression, about 10 times the global average. The report also noted high rates of PTSD and other mental health issues.
But the report doesn’t include nearly half of the region’s population: Palestinian youth. And mental health experts say young Palestinians are especially vulnerable when it comes to the region’s mental health crisis. Muna Odeh, a psychotherapist who runs a mental health hotline for Palestinians in Ramallah, told Andark that young people are at an age where they are looking for a sense of control in a situation where they have absolutely no control. “This brings anxiety. Most of them feel hopeless, they feel helpless,” she told me. “This time is tough for them. As young people, it’s tough to live in a place where nothing is certain.”
PTSD usually stems from a trauma that happened at some point in the past, says California-based psychologist Iman Farajara: “The first thing we do to name or label the trauma that a person is experiencing is to remove the victim from the situation they’re living in to a safer situation.”
“But Palestinians cannot move,” she added, a fact that has persisted for decades under Israeli occupation.
Even in the West Bank, which is relatively stable compared to Gaza, the ongoing conflict has taken a toll as people watch the massacres of their friends and family on the news and on social media. Hearing the explosions on the news “made something inside of me twist and bring my emotions to the surface. I was scared,” said Dalia Amra, a 10th grader from Ramallah. “I was really scared. I could be next.”
