A recent poll by the Israel Union of Social Workers presented a grim picture of mental health among adults in the country, Israel Hayom learned Tuesday. 

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Having surveyed 458 social workers, including in the Arab sector, the poll showed that 82% reported an increase in anxiety, 79% reported an increase in depression and 33% said they witnessed a rise in suicide and suicide attempts cases. 

The workers also lamented the lack of enough professionals, leading to delays in the critical treatment of patients. Ninety-three percent said it now takes longer to receive such care, 60% said patients have to wait up to three months to receive a psychiatric diagnosis, and 56% reported psychiatric hospitalization took over a month. 

In addition, 92% of respondents said cases of eating disorders also spiked, with patients now waiting up to three months to be hospitalized. 

"The coronavirus brings with a lot of mental distress," Inbal Hermoni, president of the Israel Union of Social Workers, said. "The worry and loneliness may not be prevented, but the responses to the distress can be corrected. Besides words, [we also need] resources, beds, and of course, manpower."

Israeli psychiatrist Julie Kayt concurred. "The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic has greatly aggravated the situation. People are going through personal crises, spend a lot of time indoors and we see an increase in anxiety and depression cases. Now more than ever we feel a shortage of professionals. 

Those in need have to wait for months to receive treatment or schedule a meeting with a therapist. Someone I know who is in need of psychiatric care said the earlier she could schedule an appointment in Beersheba was in two and a half months. I sincerely hope that the government will aid us in the situation, she said. 

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We all know too much social media can be bad for you, but doctors from countries around the world are now saying a combination of anxiety, depression, and TikTok could be behind a recent increase in teen girls complaining of tics. The phenomenon, which has doctors puzzled, appears to have begun at the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

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Reports in several medical journals noted the girls had been watching videos of people who claimed to have Tourette syndrome on the social media platform before experiencing the symptom, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

The tics, according to the doctors, are similar to those seen with individuals with mild cases of Tourette syndrome. The nervous system condition causes people to uncontrollably and repeatedly twitch or make specific movements or sounds, such as shouting, whistling, or cursing. Boys are more likely to be impacted, and symptoms tend to show when they are young and increase over time.

According to The Wall Street Journal, some medical centers have reported seeing as many as 10 times the average number of cases they would normally see before the pandemic. While they would normally see one or two cases every month, they are now seeing 10 to 20.

The doctors further noted that many patients had been diagnosed with depression or anxiety, which was exacerbated during the pandemic. They said the girls did not in fact have Tourette syndrome but a functional movement disorder.

Miriam Hall, a child neurologist at Texas Children's Hospital told The Wall Street Journal one video was unlikely to cause tics but noted the social media platform's algorithm ensured children would repeatedly watch similar videos on TikTok.

In September, the newspaper reported on an internal Facebook report that found 32% of teen girls "said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse. Comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves."

The report further said that in 2019, a Facebook internal presentation warned that Instagram "makes body image issues worse for one in three teen girls."

Even worse, another presentation found that a small percentage of British and American teen Instagram users said they started thinking suicidal thoughts due to the service.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was aware of the findings, The Wall Street Journal said.

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Lebanese troops deployed in the northern city of Tripoli early Sunday taking positions around major state institutions after a night of protests and riots against worsening living conditions left several protesters and 10 soldiers injured.

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Sporadic protests were reported throughout Lebanon on Saturday as the country's 20-month economic crisis worsened. The World Bank described the crisis as one of the worst the world has witnessed in 150 years. It is coupled with a political deadlock that has left Lebanon without a government since August.

The largest protests were in the southern port city of Sidon and in Tripoli, Lebanon's second largest city and most impoverished. Sporadic protests and road closures took place in the capital Beirut.

Lebanon has been suffering severe shortages of vital products including fuel, medicine and medical supplies, angering the public.

Lebanon's currency hit a record low Saturday, reaching 18,000 pounds to the US dollar. The pound has lost more than 90% of its value since the crisis began.

In October 2019, protesters called for the removal of the political class that has run the country since the end of the 1975-90 civil war and has been blamed for corruption and mismanagement that has ruined the country's economy.

The army said rioters on motorcycles threw stun grenades at troops in Tripoli injuring nine soldiers, while another was injured when hit by a stone. Protesters attacked several state institutions in the city.

State-run National News Agency said Tripoli and other cities in Lebanon were quiet around noon Sunday.

The situation in Lebanon is not expected to improve as political bickering between President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri has delayed the formation of a government since Hariri was named to the post in October. Talks with the International Monetary Fund over the economic crisis have been suspended since last year.

The World Bank said Lebanon's gross domestic product is projected to contract 9.5% in 2021, after shrinking by 20.3% in 2020 and 6.7% the year before.

Tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs since late 2019 in the tiny country of 6 million, including a million Syrian refugees. More than half the population lives in poverty.

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The COVID pandemic has prompted one out of every 20 Israelis to seek mental health assistance, according to the results of a survey by the Central Bureau of Statistics published this week.

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A total of 4.9% of the country's Jewish population has sought help due to the stress of the pandemic. More women (4.9%) than men (4.1%) reached out for help.

Most of the people who responded (38%) turned to counseling services offered by the Health Ministry or by the country's healthcare providers. Another third sought private therapists, and 18.7% reached out to hotlines operated by various organizations. Half of the respondents said they felt that they received help that improved their emotional state.

Other findings from the CBS survey indicate that the longer the COVID crisis lasts, the harder people find it to cope. Nearly one-third (30%) of respondents said their mental state was worse than it was prior to the onset of the COVID crisis, compared to a similar surveys from July 2020, when 26% of respondents said their mental state was worse than it was prior to COVID, and May 2020, when only 20% said their mental state had worsened.

Respondents cited high rates of depression (19%), anxiety (36.8%), and loneliness (21%). People do not appear to be acclimating to the difficulty of the crisis, possibly because of the instable nature of the drawn-out experience.

The numbers came as no surprise to the Israel Psychiatric Association.

"When 4.5% of the people reach out for treatment, it means an additional 500,000 citizens for the psychiatric system! For every person who tests positive for COVID, there is another person who is seeking treatment," says Dr. Zvi Fischel, chairman of the IPA.

"Anyone who thinks that everyone will receive service is wrong. Such a big number causes long delays for the start of treatment or long intervals between sessions. The government needs to immediately increase resources that will allow at least 30% more treatment hours in the public health system. The CBS statistics show us that distress has been consistent throughout the year of COVID. It's not a statistical error, it's a trend that must not be ignored," Fischel said.

Six months ago, the Health Ministry issued instructions to provide new patients with three free telephone therapy sessions via the service hotlines of Israel's healthcare providers.

Meanwhile, a study by Maccabi Healthcare Services' innovation institute KSM, in conjunction with the KI Institute – The Israeli Institute for Applied Research in Computational Health, found that diagnosed depression can significantly increase the chances of complications from COVID-19 in young patients. The researchers found that patients under age 60 who suffered from depression were an at-risk group that should be vaccinated.

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Money doesn't buy happiness, goes the adage. The results of a recent survey conducted by the Central Bureau of Statistics prove just that.

The CBS analyzed 16 cities based on their standard of living. The cities were divided into three categories.

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The first category includes the cities with the highest standard of living: Kfar Saba, Ramat Gan, Rehovot, Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and Rishon Lezion. The second group included Holon, Beersheba, Petah Tikva, Haifa, Netanya, and Bnei Brak, all ranked as cities with a mid-level quality of life. The third group consisted of Beit Shemesh, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Bat Yam, and Jerusalem, whose living standards the CBS ranked lowest.

The first five cities stand out for employment, housing density, ability to be promoted at work, access to computers, and more possibility of professional advancement for women. The investment in the cities' appearance was evident as well, with an emphasis on parks, sanitation, and the environment.

The research reveals a large gap between these affluent cities and the cities from the third category.

Beit Shemesh was notable for different reasons. Its residents, for example, reported the highest trust in the healthcare system and a sense of belonging, thanks to family members and volunteer work. Ashkelon boasted the most people over age 30 with higher education. Ashdod reported the highest level of security in the cybersphere. Bat Yam had the lowest infant mortality rate, and its residents reported the highest satisfaction with the transportation system and trust in the government. Jerusalem residents reported the lowest levels of loneliness and depression.

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Those dreams came to a screeching halt with the outbreak of the coronavirus, as countries shut down, economies buckled and global chaos followed. Her university admission is now on hold, the bakery project has fallen behind schedule, her family's income has gone down by 40% and she frets about losing her job at a local pharmacy.

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Al-Diwani and Athir Assem, 26, are among millions of young people in the Middle East region whose pursuit of jobs or plans for higher education and marriage have been upended by the pandemic, plunging them into the kind of deep uncertainty and despair they had hoped to leave behind.

Such turmoil is universal in the wake of the pandemic, but the despair is particularly pronounced in the Middle East, where wave after wave of war, displacement and disease have left this generation feeling bitter and hopeless. While in the West, many who have become unemployed believe they will eventually get their jobs back or somehow recover from the recession, the pandemic in some Arab countries was the final blow to economies now on the cusp of complete collapse.

The strains are also made harder because, in the Arab world, lives for young adults tend to be more scripted than for their counterparts in the West. Cultural expectations put more pressure on males to earn enough so they can move out, marry and provide for families.

"For many young people, seeing economies crumble the way that they are and seeing their prospects vanish before their eyes ... it's undoubtedly going to be taking a huge toll on mental health and well-being," said Tariq Haq, a Beirut-based senior employment specialist with the UN labor agency.

Even before the pandemic, in 2019 youth employment in the Arab region was estimated at 26.4%, compared to a global rate of 13.6%, according to estimates by the International Labor Organization. While it is too early for post-COVID-19 estimates, early data indicates that over 70% of young people in the region are in informal employment, 40% of whom are working in those sectors hardest hit by the pandemic.

Across Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, an unprecedented economic meltdown is underway, threatening to push the region at the heart of the Arab world into extreme poverty and renewed unrest. Lebanon and Syria's currencies have crashed and hyperinflation is setting in. In Iraq, where more than 60% of the population is under 25, a dramatic collapse in oil revenues has depleted the budget. About half of university graduates cannot find employment opportunities in the public or private sectors since 2018.

In Iraq and Lebanon, anger over corruption, lack of basic services and rulers who have failed to create jobs or improvements to the lives of young people last year brought people to the streets in unprecedented nationwide protests that later fizzled out without amounting to anything.

Now, millions of young are looking to leave -- only now there will be few takers in the West, where anti-immigration sentiment is rising and local economies are struggling.

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Wissam al-Sheikh, 30, recently lost his job as manager at a clothes store in downtown Beirut after the owner decided to close at the end of last year. That job provided vital income for his family of six, consisting of his parents and his three siblings, only one of whom is working.

This week, he and his friends watched with envy as European leaders clinched a deal for an unprecedented 1.8 trillion-euro ($2.1 trillion) recovery fund for their pandemic-ravaged economies.

"Here, they tell us to go plant in our gardens so we can eat," said Amjad Ramadan, a part-time salesperson. He was referring to calls by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and other politicians to turn to home planting as a way to sustain families during the crisis.

Al-Sheikh recently broke up with his fiancée, partly due to economic pressure, and scoffs at the idea of marriage or investing further in Lebanon, where he says insecurity is "the norm."

"They [politicians] have destroyed the future of every young person here," he said. "I'm just waiting for the first opportunity to get out of here."

A UN report this week expected some Arab economies to shrink by up to 13% this year, compounding the suffering of those affected by armed conflict. Another 14.3 million people are expected to be pushed into poverty, raising the total number to 115 million -- a quarter of the total Arab population.

Al-Diwani, the Iraqi pharmacist, has lived with war and instability all her life. She was in second grade in 2003 when dictator Saddam Hussein was toppled by invading US troops and Iraq was plunged into years of sectarian blood-letting, and car bombings became a daily routine.

"I used to stay up at night, terrified especially without electricity," she said.

Her more recent years were marked by the terror sowed by the Islamic State group, which seized nearly a third of the country in 2014.

In 2017, she met Assem at the University of Baghdad, where she was studying pharmacy. They fell in love and for a while the world seemed a better place.

They made plans together. She began working at a pharmacy in Baghdad but wanted to pursue her studies abroad and he was happy for her to fulfill her ambitions. She was accepted at the University of Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, England for a post-graduate degree. Her parents were supportive and helped provide a budget for her travels, which she added to from money she made from her work.

"It was my dream to finish studying and get married to the man I love," she said.

She began preparing her paperwork and visa application. The last thing she was supposed to do was translate her bachelor's degree from Arabic to English to send it to the university.

Then the coronavirus hit and all those dreams evaporated.

The university froze her acceptance, and she worries about losing her place and never feeling safe enough to travel again. Assem estimates his losses from delays in implementing the bakery project, which was supposed to open in May, at around $10,000.

Working at the pharmacy in Baghdad's Karrada district, al-Diwani encounters people suspected of being infected with the virus every day. She returns home scared and anxious that she might be carrying the infection back to her family.

"Corona destroyed me and my dreams and future in a very unexpected way," she said.

"Now the future is unknown, and I cannot think how we can come back from this."

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