Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Anxiety and Stress Disorders
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1443374

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Co-Morbid Psychological Disorders After Palestinians' Home Demolition : A Comparative Study

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, An-Najah National University, Nablus, Palestine
  • 2 Birzeit University, Birzeit, West Bank, Palestine
  • 3 Biotechnology Institute, Ankara University, Ankara, Ankara, Türkiye

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Home demolition is one of the issues that the Palestinian community faces as a result of Israeli procedures that can impact Palestinian mental health. This study aimed to measure the prevalence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, and stress among Palestinian citizens whose homes were demolished. A comparative cross-sectional design was adopted using a purposive sample of home demolished versus not home demolished Palestinian people. The Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) and the Depression and Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS) were used to assess the participants' levels of PTSD, depression, anxiety, and stress. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, Version 25, was applied to the statistical analysis. This study showed that PTSD levels among people whose homes were demolished are significantly high, with a mean of 3.2, which could be indicative of a clinical concern. However, the PTSD level in the comparison group had no significance, with a mean of 1.48. Stress, depression, and anxiety levels were represented as 32.71, in their means, 32.61, and 32.08, respectively, among home-demolished people, compared to stress 18.46, depression 15.87, and anxiety 13.06 among the non home demolished group. This study is one of the few that sheds light on one of the disadvantaged groups who suffer from home demolition and the severe mental problems that affect them, including PTSD, stress, depression, and anxiety). Furthermore, many related risk factors were studied in this research. As a future recommendation, further research is needed in this field, especially among disadvantaged groups. Stakeholders need to take action to improve the health system in Palestine.

    Keywords: PTSD, Home Demolition, Palestine, Anxiety, Depression, stress

    Received: 03 Jun 2024; Accepted: 04 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Sarhan, Jarrar, Atout and Masri. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Adnan L. Sarhan, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, An-Najah National University, Nablus, Palestine

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.