In Gaza, we cannot even begin to recover from trauma

It has been three years of the genocidal horror in Gaza. Three years of death, destruction, despair and doom.More than 74,000 people have been killed, including more than 1,400 since the so-called “ceasefire” took effect in October last year. Countless others have died preventable deaths due to lack of healthcare.The rest of us survivors live in permanent trauma – a trauma we can’t begin to recover from because the genocide has not stopped.The scale of the psychological devastation is difficult to put into words. There are some numbers that international organisations have started to use to call for urgent attention to the “mental health crisis”.Analysis by the United Nations Population Fund has concluded that more than one million children in Gaza require psychosocial support, and 96 percent of them feel that death is imminent.Among adolescents and young adults, approximately 61 percent suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 38 percent from depression and 41 percent from anxiety.One study estimated that some 88 percent of adults in Gaza have PTSD.These are children and adults who had already been traumatised by repeated wars before. By 2020 – after three months-long wa...