When a visiting New York mental-health counseling student asked residents of Gaza border communities why they stay despite the constant threat of missile attack, they answered in one word: Home.

“It struck me that they said ‘This is my home and I don’t want to leave.’ After 9/11, we saw the same thing; many people didn’t want to leave Manhattan — this place that potentially could be a target — because it’s home and they love it,” says Gillian Hammond, a second-year graduate student at SUNY-New Paltz University’s Institute for Disaster Mental Health.

Hammond and six classmates accompanied the institute’s director, Prof. James Halpern, on a 10-day January trip arranged through Ben-Gurion University (BGU) to learn about psychological first aid in Israel’s south and how Israeli coping strategies might be helpful in their work in the United States.

She tells ISRAEL21c that although Americans tend to experience disaster (such as a hurricane or school shooting) as an isolated event, whereas Gaza-area Israelis live with an undercurrent of constant stress, she noted some significant similarities.

“One of the biggest commonalities we’ve been talking about is the importance of people’s homes,” Hammond says. “We saw that a strong community gets people through and provides comfort and support  since everyone is going through the same thing.”

Halpern, who has consulted for the United Nations on assisting victims of terror, agrees that “a strong sense of social support mitigates trauma and stress as much or more than anything else,” and this is what they observed in Sderot. (via Israel21c)

[Photo: אדם שטרנברג / YouTube]