The results were stronger for the PCL-5. Its four-factor structure, corresponding to the DSM-5 symptom domains of intrusion, avoidance, negative alterations in cognition and mood, and alterations in arousal and reactivity, showed excellent fit in confirmatory factor analysis. The model produced a comparative fit index (CFI) of 1.00, a Tucker–Lewis index of 1.03, an RMSEA of 0.00 and a standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) of 0.08. Factor loadings ranged from 0.45 to 0.89 and were statistically significant. Because a Tucker–Lewis value can exceed 1.00 when a model fits far better than a poorly fitting baseline, the authors interpreted the result as evidence of a robust model rather than misspecification.

Internal consistency was high across all four PCL-5 domains. Cronbach’s alpha and McDonald’s omega were 0.86 for intrusion, 0.83 and 0.84 for avoidance, 0.85 and 0.75 for negative alterations in cognition and mood, and 0.74 and 0.72 for alterations in arousal and reactivity. Corrected item–total correlations were all above 0.30, and removing any item did not meaningfully improve consistency. Test–retest reliability over the six-month interval was generally acceptable: intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) were 0.55 for intrusion, 0.65 for negative alterations in cognition and mood, and 0.69 for alterations in arousal and reactivity. Avoidance was the exception, with an ICC of 0.37 and a 95% confidence interval of 0.19 to 0.53, a level the authors characterized as poor.

The PCL-5 also showed the expected pattern of convergent and divergent validity. Total post-traumatic stress symptom severity was positively correlated with negative affect measured by the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule–Short Form (PANAS-SF), with r = 0.67, and negatively correlated with quality of life measured by the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire (EORTC QLQ-C30), with r = −0.51. It was also negatively associated with positive affect, r = −0.43. Each of the four symptom clusters correlated positively with negative affect, negatively with positive affect and negatively with quality of life. These findings support the PCL-5 as a symptom-severity measure in this group, but the study explicitly states that it was not used to establish a clinical diagnosis of PTSD.

Symptoms were generally low in this cohort. On most PCL-5 items, more than 60% of participants selected one of the two lowest response categories, indicating that symptoms were absent or mild for many women. Several items had strongly skewed, highly peaked distributions. The researchers said this pattern may reflect the sample’s early-stage disease, assessments conducted 12 months after diagnosis, eligibility for systemic treatment and possible protective factors such as social support, optimism and meaning-making. These characteristics also limit the findings’ generalizability: the psychometric performance may not extend to people with advanced cancer or more severe post-traumatic stress symptoms, or to cancer populations beyond breast cancer.

The PTGI-SF showed a different psychometric profile. A unidimensional model provided adequate overall fit, with a CFI of 0.99, a Tucker–Lewis index of 0.98, an RMSEA of 0.07 and an SRMR of 0.09. All item loadings were statistically significant and ranged from 0.60 to 0.83. The result indicates that the 10 items formed a coherent general measure of perceived growth in this sample, even though the instrument was designed around five domains: appreciation of life, new possibilities, personal strength, relating to others and spiritual change. The researchers specified the unidimensional model as the primary solution and did not directly compare it with the competing multidimensional models, partly because stable estimation of five two-item factors would require a substantially larger sample.

Reliability of the PTGI-SF was excellent. Its internal consistency was α = 0.91 and ω = 0.91, and all corrected item–total correlations exceeded 0.30. Removing an item did not improve either coefficient. The measure also showed high test–retest stability, with an ICC of 0.91 and a 95% confidence interval of 0.86 to 0.94 between 12 and 18 months. In paired analyses, PTGI-SF scores did not change significantly over the same interval: the mean was 23.99 at 12 months and 23.03 at 18 months, a small effect of d = 0.13, p = 0.184. This stability does not mean that growth was identical for every patient or that it applies to all cancer trajectories; it describes the average scores in the 102 participants with complete paired data for this measure.

External validity was the PTGI-SF’s main weakness. Its total score was not significantly correlated with quality of life, r = 0.06, p = 0.53, or positive affect, r = 0.08, p = 0.38. It was also unrelated to negative affect, r = −0.01, p = 0.95. The authors offered several possible explanations: the sample had limited variability, the short form may lose sensitivity by reducing five domains to two items each, and a single-factor solution may obscure specific growth experiences. They also cautioned that perceived growth need not translate directly into better current well-being, because oncology-related quality of life also reflects physical functioning, symptom burden and treatment effects. The pattern is compatible with the idea that growth can involve meaning-making or reinterpretation of the cancer experience rather than serving as a simple marker of lower distress. It does not prove that the scale captures illusory growth; rather, its expected external associations were not demonstrated in this sample.

Neither scale changed significantly between 12 and 18 months. For the PCL-5, the mean total score was 13.45 at 12 months and 13.40 at 18 months among 93 participants with complete paired data; the Wilcoxon signed-rank test gave Z = −0.79, p = 0.432, with a small effect size of r = 0.08. The PTGI-SF comparison included 102 paired participants. These descriptive results support relative stability of the average scores in this cohort, but they do not establish a uniform course of symptoms or growth for individual patients. The study did not directly test the relationship between PCL-5 and PTGI-SF scores, and its design cannot determine whether distress and growth co-evolve or influence one another. Its sample was also limited to Portuguese women aged 40 to 70 with non-metastatic stage I–III breast cancer, most of whom were employed and married. Larger, more clinically diverse studies, including patients with higher symptom severity and follow-up beyond 18 months, are needed to clarify the scales’ performance and whether the two constructs change in related ways.

Subject of Research: Psychometric validation of post-traumatic stress and posttraumatic growth measures in women with breast cancer

Article Title: Trauma and posttraumatic growth in cancer: validation of the post-traumatic stress disorder checklist for DSM-5 and the posttraumatic growth inventory-short form in patients with breast cancer

Article References: Castanheira, C., Almeida, S., Manica, I., Abreu, A., Frasquilho, D., Sousa, B., Silva-Nunes, M. V., Oliveira-Maia, A. J., & Lemos, R. (2026). Trauma and posttraumatic growth in cancer: validation of the post-traumatic stress disorder checklist for DSM-5 and the posttraumatic growth inventory-short form in patients with breast cancer. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 17, Article 1855703. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2026.1855703

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2026.1855703

Keywords: breast cancer, psychometric validation, PCL-5, PTGI-SF, post-traumatic stress, posttraumatic growth, psycho-oncology, patient-reported outcomes, confirmatory factor analysis, Portuguese women, Trauma, posttraumatic

The research team, led by Farah Elbayoumi of Al-Azhar University Gaza with colleagues from the Islamic University of Gaza, Israa University and Abou Bekr Belkaid University in Algeria, recruited 248 adults attending three governmental dermatology clinics across the Gaza Strip between 15 March and 15 June 2025, in the midst of the 2023 to 2025 Gaza war. Skin diagnoses were established by the attending physician at the point of care, and a trained data collector then administered the questionnaire as a structured interview. Participants completed two widely used psychiatric instruments: the DASS-21, which quantifies depression, anxiety and stress, and the PCL-5, a checklist that screens for probable post-traumatic stress disorder with a conventional positivity threshold of 33 points.

The headline numbers are stark. Overall, 86.3 percent of participants had extremely severe anxiety on the DASS-21. Severe or extremely severe depression affected 76.6 percent of the sample, severe or extremely severe stress affected 76.2 percent, and 74.2 percent screened positive for probable PTSD. For context, in peacetime community surveys, prevalence figures for these conditions typically run to a small fraction of such levels. The authors emphasize that these are clinic attendees rather than a general population sample, so the burden reflects people unwell enough to seek dermatological care during a war, but even with that caveat the scale of distress is exceptional.

The study’s central analytical finding is that skin and psyche moved together. Skin disease severity correlated significantly with poorer scores across all psychiatric domains, with Spearman correlation coefficients ranging from 0.21 to 0.32 and all p-values below 0.001. In regression models adjusted for other factors, severe skin disease independently doubled the odds of severe or extremely severe depression, with an odds ratio of 2.05 and a 95 percent confidence interval of 1.10 to 3.80, and independently doubled the odds of severe or extremely severe stress, with an odds ratio of 2.05 and a confidence interval of 1.09 to 3.86. The mechanism the researchers invoke is a feedback loop long described in psychodermatology: sustained conflict stress dysregulates immune and inflammatory pathways that drive skin disease, while visible, itchy or painful skin lesions in turn amplify psychological distress, each condition feeding the other in a continuous cycle.

Diagnostic category mattered as well. Participants with dermatitis, a group of 17 people in the sample, reported the highest unadjusted psychiatric symptom scores across all DASS-21 and PCL-5 domains. After the authors applied false-discovery-rate correction to their bivariate disease-type comparisons, only the depression and PCL-5 differences remained statistically significant, with corrected p-values of 0.041 and 0.028 respectively. The anxiety and stress differences did not survive correction, with corrected p-values of 0.13 and 0.11, and the authors flag them as exploratory. Separately, fungal infection emerged as an independent predictor of severe stress, carrying an odds ratio of 5.65 with a confidence interval of 1.60 to 19.98, a wide interval that reflects the small number of cases but a signal consistent with the idea that chronic, treatment-resistant infections impose a distinctive psychological toll.

Perhaps the most socially revealing finding concerns visibility. Participants were asked how much they worried about others noticing their skin symptoms on a five-point scale, and each one-point increase in that worry independently raised the odds of probable PTSD by 24 percent, with an odds ratio of 1.24 and a confidence interval of 1.00 to 1.52. Sixty-one percent of participants reported concealing their skin condition from others. Intriguingly, concealment itself was not significantly associated with any psychiatric outcome, suggesting that the burden lies less in the act of hiding than in the anticipatory fear of being seen, a form of appearance-related stigma that operates even in a population facing existential threats on every side.

Methodologically, the team took deliberate steps to guard against over-interpretation in a difficult research environment. Bivariate comparisons across disease types were corrected for the false discovery rate, a statistical safeguard against treating chance findings as real when many comparisons are made. The regression models were checked for internal consistency using Cronbach’s alpha and for multicollinearity using variance inflation factors, diagnostics that confirm the predictor variables carried distinct information rather than redundant signals. Non-parametric tests were used for the skewed symptom scores, an appropriate choice for data that do not follow a normal distribution. Ethical approval was granted by the Health Research Committee at Al-Israa University on 5 March 2025, before recruitment began, and electronic informed consent was obtained from all participants, with participation having no bearing on clinical care.

The authors are candid about the limits of their evidence. The study used a convenience sample of clinic attendees rather than a random population sample, and the final 248 participants fell below the pre-specified target sample size. Cross-sectional design means the data capture a single moment and cannot establish whether skin disease drives psychiatric symptoms, psychiatric symptoms exacerbate skin disease, or, most likely in a war zone, both directions operate simultaneously through shared stress and immune pathways. The authors also note that the article was shared early as a peer-reviewed, accepted version of record in progress, citable with a permanent DOI but subject to further edits.

Even with those caveats, the implications reach beyond Gaza. The authors argue that their findings highlight the potential value of integrated psychodermatology approaches in conflict-affected humanitarian settings, including mental health screening embedded in dermatology clinics, stigma-sensitive counselling, and appropriate referral pathways, all of which they frame as candidates for further evaluation rather than established interventions. The logic is practical as much as scientific: in a health system under siege, dermatology clinics may be one of the few clinical touchpoints still functioning, and a patient presenting with an inflamed skin condition may in fact be carrying an untreated psychiatric emergency that no one has measured.

The study also contributes to a growing scientific literature on how armed conflict disrupts health through sustained stress and immune-related pathways. Chronic psychological stress alters hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activity and sympathetic output, which in turn modulate inflammatory cytokines, skin barrier function and itch signaling, providing a plausible biological substrate for the correlations observed here. What this study adds is documentation from inside an active war zone, where such evidence has long been scarce, and a demonstration that even in extremis, the old clinical observation holds: the skin and the mind are not separate organs of suffering. For the 248 patients counted in this study, and for the many they represent, treating one without the other may mean treating neither.

Subject of Research: Psychiatric symptom burden among dermatology patients in the Gaza conflict

Article Title: Psychological symptom burden among dermatology clinic attendees during the Gaza conflict: a cross-sectional psychodermatology study

Article References: Elbayoumi, F., Alshaer, N., Aljahish, A., Hassanien, M., Alkhaldey, E., Albelbeisi, A. H., & Benhamed, N. K. (2026). Psychological symptom burden among dermatology clinic attendees during the Gaza conflict: a cross-sectional psychodermatology study. BMC Public Health. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-026-29885-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12889-026-29885-7

Keywords: psychodermatology, Gaza Strip, armed conflict, mental health, PTSD, depression, anxiety, skin disease, DASS-21, PCL-5, stigma, public health

The study recruited 100 Kurdish-speaking adults attending nine outpatient clinics in the cities of Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, and Koya, covering internal medicine, gastroenterology, and neurology. Between October 2023 and March 2024, a single trained clinical psychologist conducted face-to-face interviews in private clinic rooms, using interviewer-administered questionnaires that took roughly fifteen to twenty minutes. Eligible patients had to be attending a routine appointment, able to give informed consent, and sufficiently fluent in Kurdish Sorani. Attending physicians confirmed eligibility and excluded eight individuals with severe cognitive impairment before consent, but played no role in the decision to participate, which rested entirely with the patients themselves.

The researchers used three well-established instruments adapted for the setting. Cumulative trauma exposure was measured with the War and Adversity Exposure Checklist, a 26-item inventory of general adversity and war-related event types developed for conflict-affected populations in the region. PTSD symptom severity was assessed with the Kurdish Sorani version of the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5, a 20-item scale scored from 0 to 80 that captures the four DSM-5 symptom clusters: intrusion, avoidance, negative alterations in cognition and mood, and alterations in arousal and reactivity. Somatic symptom burden was measured with the Patient Health Questionnaire-15, translated into Sorani through independent forward and back translation and piloted with 20 patients before the main study began.

The headline result is striking in its magnitude. Total PCL-5 severity correlated with PHQ-15 somatic symptom burden at r = 0.66, a strong association by psychological research standards. In a hierarchical regression model that first entered age group, gender, and self-reported chronic-disease status, then cumulative trauma exposure, and finally PTSD symptom severity, the addition of the PCL-5 score accounted for an additional 40 percent of the variance in somatic burden. The final model explained 48 percent of the variance overall, with an adjusted R-squared of 0.448. Each point increase on the PTSD scale was associated with an increase of roughly 0.38 points on the somatic symptom scale, with a bias-corrected bootstrap confidence interval running from 0.29 to 0.47.

Just as revealing was what did not predict physical symptoms. Cumulative trauma exposure, measured as the number of endorsed event types on the WAEC, showed no statistically significant correlation with somatic burden (r = 0.12, p = 0.24), even though it was associated with total PTSD severity (r = 0.26, p = 0.009). In other words, it was not the raw count of traumatic experiences that tracked with bodily complaints, but the intensity of current posttraumatic stress symptoms. The authors caution that the checklist did not capture the timing, duration, severity, or subjective meaning of events, and its observed range of 4 to 16 endorsed event types may have limited sensitivity, so the null finding should not be read as evidence that trauma exposure is unimportant.

An exploratory secondary analysis broke the PCL-5 into its four DSM-5 clusters and entered them simultaneously. All four correlated with somatic burden at the bivariate level, but when their mutual overlap was taken into account, only one cluster emerged with a bootstrap confidence interval excluding zero: negative alterations in cognition and mood, which includes persistent negative beliefs, distorted blame, shame, fear, and diminished interest. The authors interpret this cautiously. The cluster contains affective and cognitive content that overlaps with broader internalising distress, and because depression, anxiety, and general distress were not measured in this study, the coefficient should be treated as hypothesis-generating rather than as a stable, PTSD-specific effect.

The statistical work was thorough for a modest sample. The researchers checked multicollinearity with tolerance and variance inflation factors, examined residual diagnostics including the Durbin-Watson statistic, Mahalanobis distance, and Cook’s distance, and used 5,000 bootstrap resamples for confidence intervals. A sensitivity analysis removing the sex-specific menstrual item from the PHQ-15 left the primary estimate essentially unchanged. A power analysis based on the noncentral F distribution indicated the sample could detect incremental effects of roughly f-squared = 0.08 for the primary model, but smaller unique effects, particularly among the correlated PTSD clusters, may have gone undetected.

The findings fit a broader international literature. Studies of war veterans, refugees, community samples, and clinical populations have repeatedly documented co-occurrence between posttraumatic stress and physical symptom burden, including pain, fatigue, sleep disturbance, and gastrointestinal complaints. Meta-analytic evidence links trauma exposure with functional somatic syndromes, and network analyses have implicated disturbed sleep as a possible bridge between the two symptom domains. Yet cluster-level findings have varied across populations: some studies of traumatised refugees point to negative alterations in cognition and mood and arousal, while others using ICD-11 frameworks highlight sense of threat and avoidance. The new study adds a setting-specific data point from routine medical care in a region where specialist mental-health services remain scarce and stigma can constrain help-seeking for psychological problems.

The authors are careful about what the study cannot show. The cross-sectional design cannot establish temporal order or causation, and reciprocal frameworks, in which physical symptoms and posttraumatic stress maintain each other, remain plausible but untested. Recruitment relied on non-probability convenience sampling, with a single interviewer and no complete record of how many eligible patients declined or left before assessment, so selection bias of unknown direction is possible and the sample cannot be considered representative of medical outpatients across the Kurdistan Region. Medical characterisation was limited to a single yes-or-no question about chronic disease; specific diagnoses, illness severity, pain status, medication use, and medical explanations for individual symptoms were unavailable, leaving substantial residual confounding. Moreover, because both questionnaires were administered in the same interview and share some overlapping content, common-method effects cannot be excluded.

Even with those caveats, the clinical implications are hard to ignore. Patients with high somatic burden in conflict-affected settings may be presenting their distress through the language of the body, and routine medical visits may be the only point of contact with the health system where that distress could be recognised. The researchers stress that the results do not establish that elevated physical symptom scores identify PTSD, that physical symptoms are psychogenic, or that any particular screening pathway works. Instead, they argue for further evaluation of integrated, patient-centred assessment approaches, with research examining diagnostic accuracy, acceptability, medical differential assessment, referral feasibility, and clinical outcomes before implementation recommendations are made. Future studies, they suggest, should use larger, prospectively recruited samples with detailed medical and psychological measures, longitudinal designs to establish temporal ordering, and formal validation of the Sorani PHQ-15. For a region where generations have lived through repression, war, terrorism, and displacement, the study is a reminder that the line between psychological injury and physical illness may be far thinner than clinic walls suggest.

Subject of Research: The association between PTSD symptom severity and somatic symptom burden among adult medical outpatients in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq

Article Title: PTSD symptom severity and somatic symptom burden among adult medical outpatients in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq: a cross-sectional study

Article References: Mahmood, H. N., Ghafoor, Z. A., Ibrahim, H., & Neuner, F. (2026). PTSD symptom severity and somatic symptom burden among adult medical outpatients in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq: a cross-sectional study. Discover Psychology, 6(1), Article 278. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44202-026-00940-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44202-026-00940-z

Keywords: PTSD, somatic symptoms, medical outpatients, trauma exposure, Kurdistan Region of Iraq, PCL-5, PHQ-15, cross-sectional study, psychosomatic medicine, conflict-affected populations, mental health, hierarchical regression

The research team set out to fill a well-recognized gap in the literature. While individual studies have examined single psychiatric outcomes in conflict-affected populations, population-level data simultaneously assessing PTSD, depression, anxiety, and subjective well-being among general adults in the West Bank had remained limited. The investigators designed an analytical cross-sectional study using multi-stage convenience sampling, recruiting 1,615 participants aged 18 or older across all three regions of the West Bank. Data were collected face-to-face at community sites and through an online survey, a hybrid approach intended to reach respondents across varied geographic and socioeconomic circumstances.

Methodologically, the study leaned on four widely validated screening instruments administered in their Arabic versions. The PCL-5, or PTSD Checklist for DSM-5, captured symptoms of post-traumatic stress aligned with the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The PHQ-9, or Patient Health Questionnaire-9, measured depressive symptom severity, while the GAD-7, or Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7, quantified anxiety. Subjective well-being was assessed with the WHO-5 Well-Being Index, a short measure developed under the World Health Organization framework. Using these instruments together allowed the researchers to estimate prevalence for each condition and, crucially, to model how specific conflict-related exposures and sociodemographic factors independently shaped each outcome.

The headline figures demand attention. Probable PTSD was found in 38.3 percent of participants, with a 95 percent confidence interval of 35.9 to 40.6 percent. Moderate depression or worse affected 53.4 percent, moderate anxiety 46.3 percent, and poor well-being a striking 78.9 percent. These are not clinical diagnoses confirmed by structured interviews; they are screening thresholds, which the authors acknowledge. Yet the consistency of elevation across four distinct psychological domains, measured with validated tools in a large sample, signals a population carrying an extraordinary and multidimensional burden of distress.

The analytical core of the paper lies in its multivariable regression models, which disentangled the independent contributions of five conflict-related exposures: displacement, settler violence, military raids, death or injury of a family member, and house demolition. All five were independently associated with higher PTSD symptom scores. Displacement emerged as the strongest predictor, with an unstandardized coefficient of 6.24 on the PCL-5 scale, followed by settler violence at 5.53, both statistically significant at p less than .001. In practical terms, respondents who had been forced from their homes scored, on average, more than six points higher on a 80-point symptom inventory than otherwise similar respondents who had not, a substantial effect for a single exposure variable.

That displacement outranks even direct bereavement in the statistical models is a finding with theoretical weight. Trauma research has long distinguished between discrete traumatic events and prolonged, destabilizing disruptions to the social and material foundations of life. Losing one’s home combines acute loss with ongoing uncertainty about safety, shelter, livelihood, and identity, and the present data suggest that this compound disruption leaves a deeper psychometric footprint than any single violent event. Settler violence, the second strongest predictor, similarly points to the psychological impact of threats that are recurrent, localized, and unpredictable, conditions that behavioral science associates with sustained hypervigilance and learned fear generalization.

Sociodemographic factors told their own story. Income insufficiency consistently predicted worse outcomes across all four measures, linking economic deprivation to higher PTSD and depression scores, greater anxiety, and lower well-being. This pattern underscores that financial insecurity is not merely a background variable in conflict settings but an active amplifier of psychological harm, likely by constraining coping options, prolonging exposure to unsafe conditions, and eroding the sense of control that protects mental health. The finding carries direct implications for humanitarian programming, suggesting that economic support interventions may yield measurable psychological dividends alongside their material ones.

Perhaps the most consequential result concerns mental health services. Only 25.1 percent of participants reported having access to mental health care, a figure that itself quantifies a massive service gap. Among those with access, the association was encouraging but incomplete: service contact was linked to lower depression and anxiety scores and higher well-being, but not to reduced PTSD symptom severity. The authors interpret this dissociation as evidence of a missing trauma-specific layer in available care. Generic counseling and pharmacological support may alleviate mood and anxiety symptoms, but PTSD typically responds best to trauma-focused therapies, such as prolonged exposure or cognitive processing approaches, which require trained providers and are rarely available in low-resource conflict settings.

The study’s design carries limitations that readers should weigh. As a cross-sectional survey, it captures associations at a single point in time and cannot establish that conflict exposures caused the observed symptoms, however biologically and psychologically plausible such causation appears. Convenience sampling, even when staged across regions and modalities, risks underrepresenting the most severely affected or least reachable populations, and screening instruments approximate rather than confirm clinical diagnoses. The authors themselves call for future longitudinal research to track symptom trajectories and to test whether the exposure-outcome gradients they observed persist, deepen, or attenuate as circumstances evolve.

Even with those caveats, the implications are difficult to ignore. A population in which nearly four in ten adults screen positive for PTSD and four in five report poor well-being is a population whose psychological infrastructure is being eroded in real time. The researchers argue for trauma-focused, exposure-informed, and scalable mental health interventions in protracted conflict settings, with attention to the specific exposures, displacement above all, that drive the heaviest symptom burden. They also frame the findings as relevant to mental health system strengthening more broadly, noting that the gap between the conditions people screen positive for and the services they can reach is itself a modifiable determinant of population health. As conflicts elsewhere in the world grow protracted, the West Bank data offer a rigorous, sobering template for measuring what sustained violence does to the minds of those who live under it, and a reminder that rebuilding psychological well-being may be as urgent as rebuilding anything else.

Subject of Research: Mental health burden and conflict-related trauma among Palestinian adults in the West Bank

Article Title: Prolonged conflict and its psychological toll: post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, and poor well-being among Palestinians in the West Bank

Article References: Zrineh, A., Qadous, S., Jarrad, L., Khalil, A., Daraghmeh, A., AbuShamma, F., Zahdeh, M., Aqel, B., Ghneimat, M., Khudair, M. Y., Natsheh, S., Saifi, W., Awwad, S., & Alwawi, A. (2026). Prolonged conflict and its psychological toll: post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, and poor well-being among Palestinians in the West Bank. BMC Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-026-08705-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12888-026-08705-7

Keywords: PTSD, depression, anxiety, well-being, armed conflict, West Bank, Palestine, displacement, settler violence, mental health services, PCL-5, cross-sectional study