‘I started seeing the events of October 7 in my dreams’: Indirect exposure to trauma linked to PTSD in Israeli journalists and therapists

Both groups showed “significant levels of psychological distress”, but more than 50 per cent of media professionals were found to meet the validated cut-off for a probable diagnosis of PTSD – showing symptoms such as sleep disturbance, hyper arousal, and intrusive thoughts – compared to one in five therapists.

Symptoms were likely to be less evident in more experienced therapists, but the same could not be said for journalists, who were found to have “very high” levels of distress regardless of age or years on the job.

The professors believe several factors may have contributed to the differences between the two groups, including that unlike therapists, journalists do not receive any kind of training or support in how to handle trauma.

“Another explanation for the profession differences may be that media professionals are encouraged to ‘chase’ the most dramatic and severe events, as they are the ones that draw the audience and media consumers,” Hasson-Ohayan and Horesh write in the conclusion of their report, which is yet to be published.

“Following the events of October 7, this was very evident, as many news reporters made a real effort to go out, shoot the rawest footage possible and bring to the audience the most unfiltered images, sights and sounds,” they write.

Tali, a Jerusalem-based journalist who did not want to be identified, is one such reporter. 

“The first few weeks, I was working on adrenaline, reporting with conviction, feeling like it was my duty to tell the story of what happened here to the world,” she says,

“But as I collected the stories from survivors and families of hostages and then began going out into the field, to the communities that were attacked, a visit to the morgue where the bodies were being identified and eventually watching a 47-minute film of raw footage compiled by the army, the enormity of the events hit me.

“I started seeing the scenes from October 7 in my dreams - or rather, nightmares; I was running away from terrorists at the Nova Festival, I was with the young women soldiers in the shelter on the Nahal Oz base, and I could not stop smelling burnt bodies everywhere I went,” she said.

By the time the first ceasefire came at the end of November 2023, Tali said she was too disturbed to continue reporting. She took a break from working altogether, which helped her realise that “I needed to protect myself from the exposure to the news and events.”

According to trauma expert Amit Shrira, a professor in the department of social and health sciences at Bar Ilan University, the level of trauma that individuals are exposed to certainly makes a difference in the psychological effects incurred, but no one in Israel has been wholly removed from the distress of war over the past two years.

“I don't know if you can talk about direct or indirect exposure to trauma because everyone in Israel is directly exposed to the war,” he said. “Once you're in a life-threatening position - whether from terrorists or from missile attacks - you’re defined as directly exposed to trauma.”

But even for those who do go on to develop PTSD as a result of this exposure, Professor Shrira insists there is still hope.

“We know that in many individuals experiencing post-traumatic disorders, there is the ability to develop post-traumatic growth,” he said. “Once you experience the crisis you tend to really think about your life, about the way you perceive others, about the way you perceive the world, about the way you perceive the future - and you tend to change your world views.

“And in many cases, people say: ‘Well, I became a different person but I'm much stronger now.’”