Oct 7 Hamas terror attacks: Hostages taken to Gaza suffered 'three distinct traumas all coming down'
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00:00 Well, we were hearing there from Luke about the hostages, but of course, although the families of those hostages are
00:06 so relieved to have their loved ones back, they will know that after such a
00:12 traumatic experience, it might be very difficult for them to readapt to some kind of normality.
00:19 And many of the hostages are learning that their mothers or fathers,
00:22 grandparents or siblings were killed in the October the 7th massacre.
00:28 And so specialists have been advising the families on how they might help those
00:34 released to cope now that they are back in Israel. Well, to discuss all this,
00:39 I'm now joined on the line from Nashville in Tennessee by Jonathan Metzl.
00:45 He is a psychiatrist and sociologist at Vanderbilt University. First of all, I want to thank you so much for joining us,
00:52 Mr. Metzl. Thank you so much.
00:55 I don't know if it's possible to separate the two traumas,
01:02 witnessing what happened on October the 7th, that massacre, and then the subsequent
01:09 being held in packed captivity.
01:13 How will people who witnessed,
01:16 saw that massacre on October the 7th, how will they cope with having that in their minds?
01:25 Well, I think you're exactly right. If you're asking about the hostages, it's almost unimaginable. I mean, we have a, I'm a psychiatrist,
01:32 we have a full literature on responses to trauma. We have a literature on
01:36 responses to hostage taking, but I don't think there's really a literature for
01:41 seeing your spouse or your child or your relative or your friend murdered and then
01:47 immediately being taken into into captivity. So having no narrative, in other words, no narrative about what happened,
01:53 you're grieving while you're also fighting for your own life, and then we're learning more about the horrific conditions of this
02:00 captivity for certain captives.
02:03 And so processing that with a complete lack of information about what happened or in some cases
02:10 direct disinformation. And so it's trauma on top of trauma. And then
02:14 now that people are coming back, they're now going to learn the story about everything
02:20 that's happened since then and about what happened to the fate of their kibbutz or their relatives.
02:25 And so it's really like almost three distinct traumas that are all coming down on people. And I think you're right that really
02:32 time and patience and expert help and family support are all going to be so important because again,
02:39 I just can't remember times within the, you know,
02:44 my experience of working in this field where people were dealing with three such
02:49 such profound traumas and particularly since we don't even know what happened to them when they were being held hostage.
02:54 We hear that they're being given advice by
02:58 specialists in Israel.
03:01 What do you think they might be being told? What sort of advice might they be given?
03:06 When people emerge from these kind of situations, they are anxious,
03:12 they are terrified. A lot of times they worry all the time that this kind of thing could happen again.
03:18 They can be
03:19 volatile or depressed or anxious. All the natural responses, in fact responses that probably helped keep them alive when they were being held
03:27 hostage. And so I think patience, support, calm,
03:32 asking for help,
03:35 community, all those things I'm certain are going to be very important in addition to
03:40 whatever kinds of group process. I mean people who have these kind of experiences feel like they've
03:47 understandably gone through an experience that
03:49 is almost unimaginable for people who haven't gone through it.
03:53 And so talking to people who've been in situations like that down the road,
03:56 I think it's important right now as much as possible to keep them out of the eye of the media, at least for now.
04:03 And so all the things are happening, but I think it's also important to note that every case is different. People's
04:09 conditions of captivity were different. People were taken hostage in different situations.
04:15 And people are psychologically different. So I'm betting every case will be just a case-by-case basis.
04:21 And from what you know about these sort of situations,
04:25 are there certain types of personality that cope better perhaps with captivity than others?
04:32 Well again, it's hard to answer because we don't know the conditions of this captivity in particular.
04:39 You know, did they have engagement with other hostages? Did they have
04:44 interactions with
04:46 the captors, the hijackers, the kidnappers?
04:52 What were their conditions in terms of food, in terms of cleanliness?
04:56 I think the main thing is, did they often think they were going to die at certain points,
05:03 which is often a trigger for post-traumatic stress disorder.
05:05 So certainly I can say that, you know,
05:07 I know that soldiers were taken captive as well, and they probably had a bit more advanced training,
05:12 of course, in terms of how to deal with these situations.
05:14 But I mean, you're talking about like little kids and people's grandparents,
05:19 and people who've just seen their spouses murdered or seen horrific scenes of rape or things like that.
05:25 And so I would bet that really, again,
05:28 it's just really going to matter. All these variables are going to matter in terms of kind of how people
05:35 recover after something like this.
05:37 What sort of damage might they suffer? I saw
05:42 something earlier about how
05:44 some of the families were being told to be careful about hugging
05:48 relatives when they arrived, that they wouldn't be used to human contact necessarily
05:53 immediately, and to be very careful about personal space. Is that often a symptom?
06:01 Well, again, all those things can be. I mean, you just think about the standard trauma response of
06:09 what's called hyperreflexia, feeling like any noise is going to be an attack, feeling anxious.
06:15 I certainly think that especially if people were physically abused, that fears of touch can be,
06:22 you know, triggering in a way. And again, I think that fear that this thing is going to happen again,
06:28 never feeling safe, never being able to relax,
06:31 to feel like you're safe. And again, they're walking back into a very tense situation
06:38 psychopolitically in general. It's not like they're going back to the club bed or something. And so in a way,
06:43 you know, I just think again, really, I think the importance that I want to stress is a case-by-case basis.
06:49 We can certainly give general guidelines,
06:51 but I think that really learning from people what their response is is going to be important again, because this situation is
06:58 so unique and uniquely traumatising.
07:01 And we're told sometimes that children are extraordinarily
07:06 resilient. Do you think
07:08 that they have a better chance than some of the adults of moving forward?
07:13 Again, it depends on their community support. I mean, kids can be very, very resilient.
07:20 Again, I think it's going to take a true reckoning of what happened in this traumatising situation. We know for sure. I mean, kids
07:28 survived concentration camps and the Holocaust and came to
07:34 live full normal lives. There was still some part of their psyche that was traumatised.
07:39 So it's not like there's not a history of
07:41 living, of kind of overcoming this kind of thing. It's not like they're doomed for life.
07:48 But again, I just think that so much will depend on
07:51 what happened to them in captivity, what their memory of it is, and how they process that going forward.
08:00 Okay, well, I want to thank you for your thoughts, Mr.
08:04 Metzel.
08:06 Jonathan Metzel there speaking to us from Nashville in Tenerife City, from Vanderbilt University, a psychiatrist and
08:13 sociologist, with his thoughts there on how those hostages and their families might deal with the release from captivity.
08:23 Thank you.