(Adnkronos) – The 20 living Israeli hostages freed from over two years of captivity in Gaza by Islamist Palestinian group Hamas on Monday can return to “normal life” after 3-4 months of “hard work” with psychotraumatology experts and Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR), clinical psychologist and physician Udi Oren told Adnkronos Salute.
‘Yesterday was a day of celebration, the atmosphere was joyful because we had been waiting two years for Hamas to release the last remaining living hostages. However, for the 20 Israeli citizens who survived a horrific 737-day ordeal and finally returned home today, everything will change, and we have already seen this with the other hostages,” Oren said.
The 20 Israeli men will experience nightmares, flashbacks, insomnia, the fear of being alone and of leaving the house “for weeks”, said Oren, who is president of EMDR Israel and former president of EMDR Europe.
“It will be hard work, but the hope is that in 3-4 months they will be able to resume their lives. It should be said that returning to normal life is not automatic from a psychological point of view,” he said.
“However, this is only possible if they are helped through psychological treatment with experts in psychotraumatology and EMDR, Oren stressed.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) indicates EMDR as the must effective treatment for cases such as those of former hostages who were held captive for long periods, Oren stated.
Working with survivors “promises to be a very long and difficult process because they have not suffered one, two or three traumatic events, but rather, prolonged exposure to a horrible situation for many months,” he said.
“These people were tortured, deprived of food and water, forced to stay in underground tunnels with little air and in the dark. And as if that were not enough, Hamas captors told them untrue stories, one above all that Israel and Netanyahu’s government had forgotten about them.”
For all these reasons, Oren said, “we expect very slow progress”.
“In the first weeks of treatment, drug therapies may even be resorted to, although we clinicians prefer to avoid this,” Oren said.
The more EMDR therapy sessions the freed Israeli hostages undergo in quick succession, the faster their recovery will be, Oren underlined.
“They will be able to live their lives without that ‘black cloud’ hanging over them: the extreme trauma of their kidnapping and detention after 7 October 2023,” Oren said. He referred to the date of the Hamas-led cross-border attack in which 1,200 people died and 251 were taken hostage.
On “the only positive note,” the newly released hostages are mostly young and apparently healthy people, Oren pointed out.
“The whole of society is committed to helping them, but it will take time before they find some relief,” he said.
The freed hostages “are surrounded by a large multidisciplinary team with experts from every specialist field including psychologists, psychotherapists and psychiatrists,” Oren said.
It is also crucial to also give support to the families of the released hostages, “whether they returned home alive or dead,” Oren said.
Family members “have reacted in two opposite ways over the past two years,” Oren pointed out.
“They either gave in to despair and depression, or they put pressure on the government, politicians and the international community to bring their loved ones home,” Oren concluded.
