The Need for Help
Just two days ago, I was hanging out in a friend’s room when my roommate informed us that a rocket hit Eilat early in the morning. I checked my email and not surprisingly, received an alert about the situation. Fortunately, no casualties or damage were reported.
Because I intern at the Israeli Trauma Center, NATAL, I immediately thought about how the attack affected people. In early March, I went down to Sderot (a town in the South which is located less than one air mile away from the Gaza border, which has been the site of numerous attacks) with one of my classes. One of the residents spoke about how when the newspapers report how many people were wounded in a given attack, the papers only mention how many people were physically wounded. “If you ask me how many people were wounded, I say everyone,” he said. “We may not be bleeding, but our mental condition is totally set off.”
A few weeks ago, I thought about this conversation when Melanie (my boss) asked my friend and me to analyze a few studies about women and PTSD and how in Southern Israel, 17.2% of women develop PTSD whereas only 10.2% of men develop it.
When I learned about the rockets the other day, I thought about how NATAL’s hotline must be flooded with calls from Eilat. I was scared for everyone down there, especially for the women. One of the things I’ve noticed here is how much the women hold everyone together in tough times. I wondered how organizations like NATAL can help these women cope with symptoms of PTSD, and how the women could help their family members cope. I can only imagine how seeing someone so important in your family suffer can hurt you.
In light of Thursday’s events and these questions I have been asking myself, I thought it would be appropriate to share information with you about some of the projects NATAL has created in the past especially for girls and women. Seeing the results of these projects reassures me that if women get the help that they need, they will become more resilient and teach their loved ones the same.
Here are some of NATAL’s success stories from previous years
Girls Under Fire
In 2009, NATAL piloted a project at the Eden Boarding School in Kibbutz Karmina. The boarding school was established for at-risk girls, who may have experienced neglect, sexual abuse, or domestic violence. In recent years, Karmina has been hit by qassam rockets. So on top of dealing with traumatic experiences at home, these girls have to deal with a double trauma of living “under fire.”
NATAL send in a professional staff to work with the girls via group therapy, guided discussions, psychoanalytical workshops, team building exercises, and artistic expression to teach them how to cope with their anxiety. These workshops also provided a safe place for the girls to express their feelings with a strong peer group.
The project was extremely successful. In addition to learning resiliency skills, the girls say they have experienced less stress and can concentrate better in school.
Building Bridges Between Arab and Jewish Women
Acco is a mixed-city in Israel, comprising of Jews and Arabs who live side by side. In 2008 (after riots caused by religious tensions between the two groups), the Municipality of Acco asked NATAL to help the residents find a solution to the hatred and violence.
NATAL created discussion groups of 20 women (half Arab, Muslim and Christian, and half Jewish) and two discussion leaders. Both leaders were mental health professionals, and to make the group more comfortable for the women, one was Arab and one was Jewish.
The original goal of the discussion group was to strengthen personal coping resources, to give them a safe place to process their traumatic experiences and feelings, to provide psycho-educational education, to provide an opportunity for them to get acquainted with the “other,” to improve inter-personal communication, and to create a network of empowerment and friendship in Acco.
The women found the group so meaningful that they decided to continue the group independently in order to maintain the bonds they created.
As one woman said, “Through talking we realize that the Jews don’t know all the problems facing the Arabs and the Arabs don’t know all the problems facing the Jews…We can’t stand alone, but with the help we received from NATAL we can grow into a group that is really going to make changes.”
“I thought we’d learn about trauma and that’s it. As an Arab in this group I don’t want to be a tokenistic symbol of coexistence… Tokenism isn’t real. Through NATAL’s process it became real; you have to keep investing in this,” another said.
In my opinion, especially after hearing about more violence here last month, NATAL should form these kinds of groups in more cities in Israel. I think that forming friendships is the best way to cope from and learn from attacks. It’s easy for me to see why NATAL continues to be such an important and successful organization in Israel.