Mental health professionals in Israel are working around the clock to prevent lasting psychological harm as families in northern border communities continue living under the constant threat of attack.
Clinical psychologist Shulamis Pollack emphasizes that helping individuals structure traumatic experiences into coherent stories, focusing on their logical decision-making and safety measures, represents one of the most powerful methods for preventing PTSD.
Despite a temporary pause in Iranian missile strikes toward Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has indicated that military actions against Hezbollah will persist. While much of Israel experiences relative calm, northern communities remain under regular air raid warnings and persistent fear.
Ori Mogel and his wife Tom have called Misgav Am home for a decade. Their kibbutz represents Israel’s northernmost settlement, positioned even beyond Kiryat Shmona and Metula, sitting merely 5 kilometers from Lebanon’s border. “Our perimeter fence is literally the border, the border fence,” Mogel explained to The Media Line.
The father of three children all under seven years old watched his family endure evacuation after the conflict began following October 7. They relocated to a kibbutz near Kfar Saba in central Israel before finally returning home in March 2025. Now they face danger once again.
“On one hand, we are very strong. We’re a strong community, we take care of each other, and we want everyone to come back and be together,” Mogel stated. “On the other hand, the way we live here is not normal. I don’t want to use words I shouldn’t, but it’s not normal.”
Seeking respite from the continuous sounds of warfare, Mogel recently brought his family to the desert. Even when rockets aren’t striking their immediate area, northern regions remain filled with the relentless noise of combat.
“The army is here, Hezbollah is here,” he noted. “These are very difficult sounds, especially for children my kids’ age, and even older. You have to take breaks from that.”
Mogel expressed frustration with the Israeli government’s insufficient support, claiming that 70% of northern residents don’t have proper access to protected spaces. Experts have not verified this figure.
“I would expect the state to do everything possible to ensure I have a safe room in my house, especially now, so my children can be safe,” Mogel stated. “Officials can come here and see how we live. If you tell me I can stay here with my children, but a cleaning worker or technician is not allowed to come because it’s too dangerous, then something is wrong.”
Children’s trauma levels are already becoming apparent, though measuring long-term effects remains challenging. A State Comptroller report following the October 7 attack revealed that approximately 30% of the nation shows trauma symptoms or PTSD.
Mogel shared how his 6-year-old daughter recently mastered riding without training wheels. During a bike ride, she heard an alarm, immediately abandoned her bicycle, and rushed to safety. His 4-year-old son can now differentiate between Israeli explosions and Hezbollah attacks. His youngest child, only 18 months old, automatically runs to the safe room upon hearing sirens.
Regarding long-term effects on his children, Mogel stated: “They will need treatment.” Having experienced the Second Lebanon War in 2006 at age 13 and requiring help himself, he added: “I hope their lives won’t be damaged, but I expect I’ll need to give them the treatment they’ll need … We’ll all probably need treatment.”
Understanding his children require professional assistance, Mogel recognizes that specialists like Shulamis Pollack are already providing crucial intervention, responding to attack sites to stabilize emotional responses before trauma becomes entrenched.
Pollack, a clinical psychologist from Beit Shemesh, serves with United Hatzalah’s emergency psychological response team. Their mission involves supporting community members immediately following attacks.
“We go to an impact site, and we don’t know what we’re going to find, much like medical personnel don’t know what they will find,” Pollack described. “We’re trained to look for different levels of distress … In all cases, the first thing that we do is get a person’s nervous system regulated, and once they’re regulated, we can help them make well-thought-out decisions, effective decisions, safe decisions.”
At impact locations, individuals affected in non-medical ways also require attention because they can become susceptible to harm, she explained. She recalled arriving at one site early in the conflict where a woman’s house had been struck and was literally falling apart. Though the family had escaped, the woman kept returning inside to retrieve possessions.
The woman was in panic, declaring: “I need my head covering. I need my favorite bag. I had a birthday present I got from my mother-in-law, and I want it,” while the structure continued collapsing around her.
Pollack informed The Media Line that the mental health function at such moments involves preventing “second-line damage”—injuries from individuals who, emotionally unstable and driven by feelings rather than reason, make hazardous choices.
A secondary level of care exists for people no longer facing immediate danger but unable to organize their thinking. At another incident site, Pollack found homes still intact but with all windows blown out. In one residence, glass covered the floor while a mother of four young children attempted to sweep it up as her barefoot children stood nearby.
“The first thing I said to her was, ‘Let’s take a breath. Let’s survey the scene logically,’” Pollack described. She helped calm the woman and encouraged her to leave with her children. After calling her husband, who later arrived to clean the glass himself, Pollack continued: “We sat down after I stabilized her, and I was able to help her figure out the next steps. I’m engaging the logic part of her brain, and then I’m allowing her to make a regulated decision when she’s in a much calmer place.”
Following the initial attack on Beit Shemesh during Operation Rising Lion, which resulted in nine fatalities, Pollack and other psychotrauma responders conducted an evening session for emergency personnel who had worked at the impact site, including United Hatzalah ambulance operators and volunteer medics exposed to extremely challenging sights, sounds, and experiences.
Pollack observed that responders are impacted not only by death and destruction at scenes but also by their own critical decisions, such as prioritizing victims or deciding whether to enter burning structures. She stressed that immediate processing of these experiences is essential for preventing lasting trauma.
United Hatzalah’s psychological response unit combines professionals from various backgrounds nationwide. They maintain a WhatsApp communication network to rapidly share information about incidents requiring support. Generally, nearby responders arrive first. When events occur in a responder’s own community, their participation often proves beneficial due to their understanding of local culture and mindset.
According to Pollack, helping people structure events into coherent narratives with clear beginnings, middles, and endings, while emphasizing how they used reasoning to ensure safety and make challenging decisions, represents one of the most effective PTSD prevention methods.
“Then they feel good about those choices, which doesn’t mean that we whitewash things that were hard, but it means we make order out of things,” Pollack explained. “One of the greatest ways to prevent PTSD is to have an organized version of what happened, an organized narrative.”
With approximately 100 emergency responders attending the evening workshop in Beit Shemesh, Pollack said the team helped construct this narrative while providing psychological first aid. This included preparing participants for potential experiences in coming hours and days, helping them recognize when additional support might be needed, and sharing practical self-care tools including proper sleep, exercise, nutrition, and physical health support to enable emotional recovery.
“The medical field has become more aware of how important people’s emotional needs are for their long-term medical wellness,” Pollack stated. “I think that’s an enormous step that United Hatzalah has taken, in parallel with the broader medical field, by providing psychological first aid so people can remain well.”
Mogel acknowledged that he and his family are, in essence, defending the country by continuing to live in harm’s way. “We understand the responsibility,” he said, adding his willingness to bear that burden, even if it requires years of trauma therapy. However, he hopes the IDF will complete their mission rather than agreeing to an early ceasefire that leaves the area unsafe.
“Agreements won’t solve this. They need to finish what they started,” Mogel concluded. For his family’s situation, he explained, healing can only begin when safety and quiet return.
