Israel has reported a sharp rise in PTSD and suicides among its troops after two years of conflict.
The country’s defence ministry says it has recorded a nearly 40 per cent increase in PTSD cases among its soldiers since September 2023, and predicts the figure will increase by 180 per cent by 2028.
The Gaza war began following the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israel and quickly expanded with cross-border fire between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and reservists were deployed across both fronts in some of the heaviest fighting in the country’s history.
Of the 22,300 troops or personnel being treated for war wounds, 60 per cent suffer from post-trauma, the ministry says.
Israeli forces have killed more than 71,000 Palestinians in Gaza and 4,400 in southern Lebanon, according to Gazan and Lebanese officials, and Israel says more than 1,100 service members have been killed since 7 October.
The country’s second-largest healthcare provider, Maccabi, said in its 2025 annual report that 39 per cent of Israeli military personnel under its treatment had sought mental health support while 26 per cent had voiced concerns about depression.
The defence ministry has expanded the healthcare provided to those dealing with mental health issues, increased the budget, and said there was an increase of about 50 per cent in the use of alternative treatments.
Several Israeli organisations like NGO HaGal Sheli, which uses surfing as a therapy technique, have taken on hundreds of soldiers and reservists suffering from the condition. Some former soldiers have therapy dogs.
Ronen Sidi, a clinical psychologist who directs combat veteran research at Emek Medical Center in northern Israel, said soldiers were generally grappling with two different sources of trauma.
One source was related to “deep experiences of fear” and “being afraid to die” while deployed in Gaza and Lebanon and even while at home in Israel. Many witnessed the Hamas assault on southern Israel, in which the militants also took around 250 hostages back into Gaza, and its aftermath firsthand.
Mr Sidi said the second source is from moral injury, or the damage done to a person’s conscience or moral compass from something they did.
He said: “A lot of (soldiers’) split-second decisions are good decisions, which they take under fire, but some of them are not, and then women and children are injured and killed by accident, and living with the feeling that you have killed innocent people… is a very difficult feeling and you can’t correct what you have done.”
One reservist, Paul, a 28-year-old father of three, said he had to leave his job as a project manager with a global firm because “the whistles of the bullets” above his head lingered with him even after returning home.
Paul, who declined to give his last name over privacy concerns, said he deployed in combat roles in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Although fighting has abated in recent months, he says he lives in a constant state of alert.
He said: “I live that way every day.”
A soldier seeking state support for their mental health must appear before a defence ministry assessment committee which determines the severity of their case and grants them official recognition.
That process can take months and can deter soldiers from seeking help, some trauma professionals say.
Israel’s defence ministry says it provides some immediate help to soldiers once they start the evaluation process and has increased this effort since the war began.
An Israeli parliamentary committee found in October that 279 soldiers had attempted suicide in the period from January 2024 to July 2025, a sharp increase from previous years.
The report found that combat soldiers comprised 78 per cent of all suicide cases in Israel in 2024.
The risk of suicide or self-harm increases if trauma is untreated, said Mr Sidi.
He said: “After October 7 and the war, the mental health institutions in Israel are overwhelmed completely, and a lot of people either can’t get therapy or don’t even understand the distress that they are feeling has to do with what they have experienced.”
For soldiers, the chance of seeing combat remains high. Israel’s military remains deployed in over half of Gaza and fighting has persisted there despite a US-backed truce in October, with more than 440 Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers killed.
Its troops still occupy parts of southern Lebanon, as the Lebanese army presses on with disarming Hezbollah under a separate US-brokered deal. In Syria, Israeli troops have occupied an expanded section of the country’s south since the ouster of former leader Bashar al-Assad.
As tensions flare with Iran and the US threatens to intervene, Israel could also find itself in another violent confrontation with Tehran, after last June’s 12-day war.
The war has left much of Gaza destroyed and its two million people overwhelmingly lack proper shelter, food or access to medical and health services.
Palestinian mental health specialists have said Gazans are suffering “a volcano” of psychological trauma, with large numbers now seeking treatment, and children suffering symptoms such as night terrors and an inability to focus.
