Reflection 3 Resilience

Reflection 3
Resilience

I really enjoyed our talk with Professor Shaul Kimhi at Tel-Hai College on Home Front Resiliency: Myths, Prejudice, and concepts and confusion. First off, I’m really glad we had this talk because I personally did not know that much about resiliency and going to places like Sderot and seeing schools and homes that have continuously been hit by rockets really makes one question the psychological effects conflict has on the individual, community, and nation.

However, as Professor Kimhi pointed out, we are a lot more resilient than we often think and I appreciated his breakdown of the three levels of resiliency- individual, community, and nation. The concept of communal/ national resiliency was especially intriguing. People living in a stronger community have less negative stress symptoms after a traumatic event. However, as Israel grows into a more individualistic society with a turn from the more socialistic history of kibbutzim to present day capitalism, they have had to deal with the social consequences. This turn has resulted in greater inequality which influences lower social integration, and consequently lower communal/ national resilience. This makes me question- will this turn to a more individualistic society have implications on Israeli resiliency in the future?

Furthermore, his talk has really aided me in my own independent research on factors that can influence the rates of PTSD in U.S. and Israel. While some may disagree, I feel that Israel is a lot more of a communal society and the U.S. on whole is a more individualistic society. I do believe that the IDF is definitely a communal force of Israeli society and plays a large role in developing a strong sense of community/ national resilience. Furthermore, just considering Israel’s small size also strengthens national resilience. This community/ national resilience could play a role in helping IDF soldiers bounce back from traumatic events easier than U.S. soldiers. Also, I found out that there is the same criteria for diagnosing PTSD between the U.S. and Israel which is critical to compare the countries. Adding to that, Prof. Kimhi helped me think about the complexity of even studying PTSD rates because there is no objective measure with psychology. It is hard to determine what causes PTSD and many of the rates provided are not necessarily caused by war, they could have been caused by a traumatic event in the family, rape, etc. These are all very important factors to keep in mind while I do my research.