Political violence and posttraumatic stress symptoms among Palestinians: The mediating roles of sense of belongingness and loneliness

Abstract

The current study investigated the correlation between political violence and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) and whether the sense of belongingness (SOB) and loneliness mediate the correlation between the two variables among Palestinians living in a society characterised by high political violence and prolonged traumatic events. The study sample consisted of 590 Palestinian adults, consisting of 360 men and 230 women, and were recruited using non‐probabilistic convenience sampling methods from a village in the northern region of the occupied Palestinian territories. This study suggests a positive correlation between political violence and PTSS, a positive correlation between loneliness and PTSS, and a negative correlation between SOB and PTSS. SOB and loneliness mediated the correlation between political violence and trauma‐related symptoms.

Development of a context-specific trauma scale among a Palestinian adult population living amidst military violence

“…The results showed that most of the adolescents experienced personal trauma (N = 909, 88.4%), witnessed trauma to others (N = 861, 83.7%) and observed demolition of property (N = 908, 88.3%) during the war on Gaza, and 53.5% of the sample met DSM-V diagnostic criteria of PTSD (El-Khodary et al, 2020). Furthermore, Mahamid et al (2023) have studied the association between political conflict and posttraumatic stress symptoms among Palestinian adults and found that there was a positive correlation between political violence and signs of trauma.…”