Israel's children and adolescents are facing severe mental health strain amid years of conflict, sirens and war, with at-risk youth described as paying some of the steepest costs, placing unprecedented demands on both government resources and philanthropic organizations as the nation grapples with how to allocate scarce funding for treatment and intervention programs.
One report said nearly one in three Israeli youth from kindergarten through high school were considered to be on the at-risk spectrum even before the latest Iran-Israel war. Since the beginning of the conflict, the National Insurance Institute has recognized at least 23,212 children and youth as physically or mentally damaged, with 56 children and teens murdered, 389 having lost at least one parent to terrorism, and 38,628 evacuated from their homes on the northern and southern borders.
Escalating Treatment Demands
PTSD diagnoses rose by 70% each month from October 2023 through the end of 2024, adding 23,600 new patients, while diagnoses of depression and anxiety in 2024 were double those recorded in 2023. Calls to emergency mental health hotlines that specifically support at-risk youth have tripled and are now treating over 3,000 people weekly, up from 350 before the war.
For children in Israel's border communities in the North and South, the sound of sirens and rocket fire has become the background noise of daily life. A separate report said residents of communities along the northern border remain under rocket fire from Hezbollah in Lebanon, and that over the past two years a comprehensive study of children living in some of those communities found "a multidimensional decline in the emotional resilience and functioning among Israel's children and youth."
Border Communities Bear Heaviest Burden
Inside the northern conflict zones, 43% of parents with children up to the age of three reported significant emotional distress in their children, including heightened startle responses to noise, severe separation anxiety or sleep disorders. Among school-aged children and youth in grades one through 12 in regions such as the Golan Heights and the northern town of Ma'alot-Tarshiha, more than 18% of students were observed to suffer from moderate to significant emotional difficulties, and another 30% faced attention and concentration issues such as ADHD, attributed to high distractibility caused by ongoing war and chronic anxiety.
In the South, data from cities such as Ashkelon suggested "an urgent need for processing trauma and grief," and 39% of students who participated in group therapy activities in the region where the Gaza war was sparked by Hamas's October 7, 2023, attack were referred to more intensive clinical intervention due to emotional flooding and behavioral outbursts.
Resource Allocation Challenges
Josef Fertouk, a psychologist and the Israeli Social Platform's vice president for strategy and development, said, "Since October 7, we are in a situation where children suffer again and again and again, not only from rounds of fighting but because we are embroiled in one long war." Shaltiel Sebban, the organization's chief executive officer, said, "It is more critical than before; the need is now bigger than ever, not only because we are in another war but because of what the children went through even before this latest round." He added, "These children and youth have not yet returned to track, and they need our help," and said, "the goal is not only to return them to pre-October 7 but to help them grow, help the North grow and the South grow, and allow these children to overcome what happened and learn from it. It is a national challenge."
Fertouk said, "There will always be not enough money to give treatment – that is a fact," and added that "the need is always bigger and bigger, and it is even more important and critical to manage the scarce resources in order to see who exactly needs what." He said the goal of the study was to create synchronization among all the bodies operating in the field so they do not give double funding. He also said the program was being built with a foundation of philanthropic support from the Jewish Federations of North America, including the Jewish Federation of Toronto, the St. Paul Federation, the Arison Foundation, the Edmond J. Safra Foundation, the Friedberg Foundation, the Rochlin Foundation and the Perimont Education Initiative.
Fertouk said, "One of the critical things here is the role of philanthropy and Diaspora Jewry. It needs to be a catalyst or accelerator in places the government, because it is a time of emergency, currently cannot deal with." He said the government was not succeeding at all in organizing quickly for the crisis and that its precious resources allocated to resilience end up going to those who shout the loudest. He cited the community of Ma'aleh Yosef near the border with Lebanon and said, "We identified that among all children in daycare frameworks, 40% needed individual intervention in child development issues.... That is much higher than the average in Israel, and it showed the depth of the crisis those children experienced." Sebban said, "The fear is that we can have a generation that is totally lost, young people who spent long periods of time in shelters surrounded by missiles and booms."
Why This Matters:
The tripling of emergency mental health calls and 70% monthly increases in PTSD diagnoses reveal a crisis that is straining Israel's institutional capacity to respond effectively. With 23,212 children officially recognized as physically or mentally damaged and nearly one in three youth already considered at-risk before the latest conflict, the fiscal burden of providing adequate treatment threatens to overwhelm government resources. Fertouk's assessment that government resources "end up going to those who shout the loudest" highlights the inefficiencies that emerge when crisis management lacks coordinated allocation mechanisms. The reliance on philanthropic organizations from North America and private foundations to fill gaps demonstrates both the limits of government intervention during extended emergencies and the critical role of civil society and private charitable giving in addressing urgent national needs when public institutions cannot scale quickly enough.