How does a childhood spent rushing for shelter when rocket warning sirens sound affect the mental health of new IDF recruits? Ben-Gurion University of the Negev public health researchers will evaluate resilience among 18-year-old men and women from communities in the western Negev.
Residents of these communities, which border the Gaza Strip, bear the brunt of the rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza and experience high levels of stress and tension. The circumstances of these children's upbringing compounds the challenges they face when they enlist in the IDF at age 18.
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The Eshkol Regional Council reached out to Ben-Gurion University after noticing an increasing number of new recruits experiencing significant distress at the start of their military service, which is already a stressful period.
In an attempt to understand and possibly find ways of confronting the ongoing trauma, council members reached out to Professor Limor Aharonson-Daniel and Dr. Stav Shapira of BGU's PREPARED Center for Emergency Response Research and School of Public Health. Both have done work evaluating resilience in residents of the western Negev.
Aharonson-Daniel and Shapira plan to delve into the methods these young soldiers use to cope and what resources are available to them.
Once the information is collected, Shapira and Aharonson-Daniel plan to work with the IDF and with regional councils in the Gaza border region to develop a program to boost resiliency among the youth of the western Negev.
