During the current Iron Swords War, parents in Israel are overcome by ongoing feelings of fatigue, psychological tension, and exhaustion related to their parental functioning (“parental burnout”), a study by the University of Haifa has found.
Among parents whose partners have been called up for reserve duty, the situation is even more serious, with levels of parental burnout as high as 3.5 times the global average.
The study led by doctoral student Mor Keleynikov also found that in terms of mental health indexes, Israeli parents show a slight improvement over time (for example, in their levels of anxiety and depression), particularly if they attempted to reevaluate negative situations and feelings concerning the war. Despite this, the levels of distress remain very high.
The researchers posed the followed question: “Does the way parents coped with their emotions at the start of the war predict the change in their mental wellbeing?”
To answer this question, the study compared the mental health of parents in Israel at two points: when the war broke out, and eight months later.
The key index was parental burnout, a term that refers to a situation dominated by profound fatigue, mental tension, and a sense of exhaustion regarding parental functioning.
In this situation, parents have a sense of ongoing psychological and emotional burden that leads to feelings of inability in coping with the demands of parenthood.
While other indexes of mental wellbeing, such as depression and anxiety, showed a slight improvement over time, no improvement has been seen in the index of parental burnout over the course of the war.
However, parents who chose not to express their feelings externally, or who sought to “reexamine” their feelings and look at the situation from different angles, showed lower levels of parental burnout than those who persisted in their negative mindsets and externalized negative emotions.
When parents and children are exposed to war together, as in the case of the current Iron Swords War, parental functioning is complicated due to the distress and danger facing both parents and children.
Method
In November 2023, about a month after the war began, a survey was conducted among Israeli parents who completed a questionnaire addressing levels of depression, anxiety, stress, post-traumatic symptoms, and parental burnout.
The questionnaire also asked parents to report how they are coping with negative events and emotions, based on three possible responses: (1) reevaluation (also termed reappraisal) – an attempt to look at the event in a different way in order to reduce negative emotions; (2) suppression of emotional expression – an attempt not to show the emotion externally; and (3) rumination – passive and repetitive reflection about the negative situation (e.g., “why does negative events always happen to me?”).
At the first milestone, a month after the war erupted, approximately 600 parents participated in the study. At the second milestone, approximately six months later (between May and July 2024), 263 of the original respondents participated (average age 38, 213 women, 67 parents reported that their partner has served in the army during the war).
Doctoral student Mor Keleynikov (University of Haifa) led the study, together with Dr. Reuma Gadassi Polack (Tel Aviv-Jaffa Academic College), Professor Noga Cohen (University of Haifa), Dr. Joy Benatov (University of Haifa), and Dr. Dana Lassri (Hebrew University of Jerusalem).
Keleynikov undertook the study as part of her doctoral thesis, with the help of funding from the University of Haifa and a research grant from the Mifrasim Institute for Research and Teaching in Psychotherapy, awarded to Dr. Gadassi Polack.
Findings
The findings showed a slight (but statistically significant) drop in the indexes for mental distress – depression, anxiety, stress, and symptoms of PTSD.
Participants who used adaptive emotion regulation strategies, such as reinterpreting negative situations and feelings at the beginning of the war experienced a more significant improvement in their mental condition, and faced less distress, while those who engaged in rumination at the beginning of the war showed a smaller improvement.
The parents’ reports also showed that no improvement occurred during the war in terms of the high level of parental burnout. In other words, the level of parental burnout remains high and has not fallen since the war began.
At the beginning of the war, seven percent of parents reported parental burnout, while at the second milestone eight percent of parents did so; the global average is three percent (thus the identified level is 2.67 times this average).
Participants who made more use of reappraisal (looking at the events and at their emotions from a perspective that reduced negative feelings) and who suppressed their expression of negative emotions experienced a fall in parental burnout over time.
This finding concerning reevaluation is consistent with the professional literature in the field. However, the finding regarding the expression of emotions is surprising. Such suppression usually constitutes a coping mechanism that impairs mental health; but the findings of the current study show that this strategy can reduce burnout among parents in situations of significant stress. The finding can be explained by the complex nature of the parent-child relationship, including the desire of parents to refrain from exposing their children to their own negative emotions.
Reservists’ Families Suffer More
The study also examined the partners of parents drafted for reserve duty and the way they responded to this situation.
The level of parental burnout among the partners of reserve soldiers was significantly higher than that among the general population of parents at both milestones.
Among parents whose partner was drafted for reserve duty, 11 percent reported parental burnout (3.67 times the global average) at both milestones.
The findings also showed significant gaps for the other indexes: parents whose partner was drafted for reserve duty showed higher levels of distress than the other parents. For example, the proportion of respondents whose partners were not drafted for reserve duty suffering from PTSD symptoms was 35 percent in November, falling to 19 percent in May–July.
By contrast, the proportion of those displaying PTSD symptoms among respondents whose partners were drafted for reserve duty was 44 percent in November, falling to 33 percent in May–July.
“The war has certainly had a significant influence on the mental health of parents in Israel, particularly among the partners of parents drafted for reserve duty,” Keleynikov said. “However, it is possible to reduce the level of distress, particularly by adopting an appropriate perspective on the challenges and adopting a new way of looking at the situation that reduces negative emotions.
“It is important that parents engage in internal reflection and, when necessary, seek help, since we know that the parent’s mental health is a very important predictor of the child’s mental health.”
Dr. Dana Lassri added that the researchers identified several important mechanisms for improving mood that could be translated into therapeutic interventions that might help parents cope with the difficulties of this period.
“It is very important to develop therapeutic responses for parents, due to the ramifications this has for the functioning of the population,” Lassri said.
Protracted war has serious ramifications for the mental health of a population, Cohen noted. “The need to cope with recurring negative events, anxiety, and the inability to plan for the future, as well as the existential fear among a large part of the population, influence mental health right now — but will also have an influence for many years to come in ways that cannot easily be predicted at this point. Decision makers should be exposed to these data and should taken them into account.”
Examples of Parental Experiences (edited to protect respondents’ anonymity)
“On Holocaust Remembrance Day, my daughter asked all kinds of questions about why they did it and whether it could happen again. After the events of October 7, I feel that I gave her answers that weren’t appropriate for her age. She had nightmares and didn’t sleep all night.”
“When the news reports that soldiers have been killed, I tend to react with anxiety. My kids sense the changes in my body language and voice. It’s already hard enough for them to cope with the situation and I only make things harder, because they get worried when they see me like that.”
“My husband is on reserve duty, and since he left I feel that one of my boys doesn’t respect me and deliberately misbehaves. I yelled at him so loudly that I cried about it for two hours that night.”
“My son is going through a difficult period, he’s very emotional and sensitive. I understand that it’s because of the situation and because my husband is on reserve duty, but it’s still hard for me to contain him and give him the response he needs. It makes me feel like a failure as a mother.”
“I got very bad news that a good friends of ours was murdered in the war. We got the news while the kids were in the car with us, and we couldn’t stop ourselves crying. We could see that it was frightening them and stressing them out, but I still felt it was hard to control myself.”
“I had a panic attack after news reports about the war. My son saw me while I was having the panic attack. He just stared at me, at first in silence and then he started to cry quietly, asking again and again, ‘What’s wrong, mom?’ I just can’t get that image out of my mind.”
“We went on a family vacation and the whole time my son was looking for a protected space wherever we went. When we went on walks in nature and there wasn’t a protected space around us, he was in a state of constant stress.”
“We stayed with my parents for a while, because we don’t have a protected space at home. They constantly criticized my parenting and it still bothers me. I feel that I manage to control myself in front of the kids, but as soon as I’m alone, I break down.”
“My son refused to go on camp at Passover. He was afraid that his dad would be called to reserve duty and would die.”
