Background: Home demolition is one of the issues that the Palestinian
community faces as a result of Israeli procedures that can impact Palestinian
mental health. This study aimed to measure the prevalence of Post-Traumatic
Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, and stress among Palestinian citizens
whose homes were demolished.
Materials and methods: A comparative cross-sectional design was adopted
using a purposive sample of home demolished versus not home demolished
Palestinian people. The Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) and the
Depression and Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS) were used to assess the
participants' levels of PTSD, depression, anxiety, and stress. The Statistical
Package for the Social Sciences, Version 25, was applied to the statistical analysis.
Results: This study showed that PTSD levels among people whose homes were
demolished are significantly high, with a mean of 3.2, which could be indicative of
a clinical concern. However, the PTSD level in the comparison group had no
significance, with a mean of 1.48. Stress, depression, and anxiety levels were
represented as 32.71, in their means, 32.61, and 32.08, respectively, among
home-demolished people, compared to stress 18.46, depression 15.87, and
anxiety 13.06 among the non home demolished group.
Conclusions: This study is one of the few that sheds light on one of the
disadvantaged groups who suffer from home demolition and the severe
mental problems that affect them, including PTSD, stress, depression, and
anxiety). Furthermore, many related risk factors were studied in this research.
As a future recommendation, further research is needed in this field, especially
among disadvantaged groups. Stakeholders need to take action to improve the
health system in Palestine.
KEYWORDS

Title

Frontiers in Psychiatry

Publisher

Frontiers

Publisher Country

Switzerland

Indexing

Scopus

Impact Factor

3.0

Publication Type

Both (Printed and Online)

Volume

--

Year

--

Pages

--