Unseen Casualties: Suicide Among Israel’s Returning Soldiers
Army service is a rite of passage for young Israelis, often a transformative experience. But in the 21 months since October 7, that transformation has frequently taken extreme forms, with many lives changed forever, not just by the accumulation of life experience, but by the trauma of what soldiers saw, heard, felt, and the inconsolable loss of comrades they have buried.
This holiday season, give to:
Truth and understanding
The Media Line's intrepid correspondents are in Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Pakistan providing first-person reporting.
They all said they cover it.
We see it.
We report with just one agenda: the truth.
The result is a mental health crisis of unprecedented proportions in Israel, with a rising number of suicides among active IDF soldiers, reservists, and those who struggled to bridge the gap between the battlefield and civilian life and were lost in the process. The Media Line’s Gabriel Colodro, along with Felice Friedson, confronts this complex and heart-wrenching issue in the article Israeli Soldiers’ Suicides Fall Between the Cracks — Just 1,000 Psychiatrists Struggle to Fill the Gap.
The article shows that combat trauma, as overwhelming as it is, is only the beginning of the struggle. The shortage of psychiatrists, the complexity of the system, and the expectation to abruptly shift from battleground to boardroom—or even back home—leave too many who sacrificed so much feeling unmoored. The first step to healing is recognizing the scope of the problem, and the article offers insight into why this struggle is so confounding and what signs to look for when a loved one returns from war.
