Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
An Israel Defense Forces reservist, Eliran Mizrachi of Ma’aleh Adumim, tragically took his own life earlier this month after serving for a long period in Gaza, getting a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), undergoing treatment that was not successfully concluded and being called up prematurely for additional reserve duty. Psychiatrists asserted that he was unfit for additional reserve duty.
Soldiers with PTSD go back to duty mid-treatment
However, the IDF and the Defense Ministry have not yet learned a lesson from this catastrophic, preventable case. Now, therapists at the National Clinic for Traumatic Stress & Resilience Tel Aviv University (TAU) – the largest PTSD clinic in Israel – warn officially that “some of our patients, deeply committed to their country, unit, and comrades, leave everything behind and go back to reserve duty in the midst of treatment for their PTSD. In this, they risk aggravating their own psychological condition, and since they might not be fully fit for active service, they also endanger their comrades.”
The information was presented at TAU’s Annual Convention, “Israel’s Future.”
National Center director Prof. Yair Bar-Haim declared that “since the October 7 attack, the number of PTSD sufferers in need of therapy has grown every month. Often reservists go back home, presumably to their ‘normal lives,’ and it takes them some time to realize that they can’t function normally at work or at home. They also face danger from a troubling phenomenon we recognized recently – that many of our patients are called up again before completing therapy for PTSD from their first round of fighting.”