Monday March 4 2024: Jerusalem Post: Israeli Governmental effort to charge fee for psychiatric emergency room visits causes outrage.
Protests sounded against the intention of the Health Ministry and the Treasury to impose stiff fees on patients going to psychiatric hospital emergency rooms.
The intention of the Health and Finance Ministries to charge people who come to a psychiatric emergency room NIS 600 to NIS 800 for treatment aroused the ire of the Knesset Health Committee last Monday February 26 2024.
Acting committee chairman Member of Parliament Moshe Roth declared: “There is no place for such a fee, and the Health Ministry must force the health funds to establish treatment centers in the community.” He even suggested considering the establishment of unified hotlines for all health fund members and to examine the possibility of adding reasons for granting an exemption from fees when going to the emergency room.
He asked the Health Ministry to submit to the committee within a month a calculation of the estimated amount of income from examination fees at the psychiatric hospitals, the types of referrals for a psychiatric examination, and the percentage of repeat referrals to psychiatric examination.
The Members of Knesset present said that this new demand from the ministries “is serious and causes unprecedented harm to the mentally challenged, and it could further worsen their situation and the situation of the system, which are also in bad shape.
Member of Knesset Iman Khatib Yasin warned of the lack of accessibility and adaptation to the various populations of people with mental illness, and the addition of the fee - will create another barrier on the way to treatment, According to Justice Ministry attorney Daniel Raz, most of the people who apply to psychiatric hospitals today are weak populations.
Meanwhile experts say that Israel has been plunged into a mental health crisis by the Hamas attacks of Oct 7, with the population reeling from anxiety and depression and at risk of post-traumatic stress disorder.
A study published in the Lancet medical journal in 2024 said "all citizens in Israel were, in some fashion, exposed to this attack of unprecedented scope and traumatic impact". "It reflects a mass national trauma," said the study, co-authored by clinical psychologist Yossi Levi-Belz, which looked at PTSD, depression and anxiety rates after the attack and found "a broad and significant impact" on the mental health of Israeli's.
In the three months since the Israel-Hamas war began with the terror group’s deadly attack, the mental stress of Jewish Israeli's has “skyrocketed” while the population is less active and sleeping less, according to a recent Tel Aviv University study.
“Approximately 23% of adult Jewish Israelis who were not directly exposed to the horrors of October 7 suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (compared to 4.5% who were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder before the outbreak of the war),” the researchers found.
They also find that after the events of October 7, “about 55% of adult Jewish Israelis suffer from clinical anxiety at various levels, and about 23% suffer from clinical anxiety at a moderate to high level.”
Using data from about 5,000 smartwatch users, the researchers also find that since the beginning of the war there is a “significant decrease in the reported mood level, in physical activity as reflected in the number of daily steps, and in the reported quality of sleep, which was accompanied by a significant increase in time awake.”
The study published in the Lancet’s “EClinicalMedicine 2023,” found the prevalence of probable post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety in the weeks following the Hamas terror attacks (at 29% for PTSD) 42% for depression, and 44% for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) respectively), almost double the prevalence recorded two months before the war.
“The prevalence's of PTSD, depression, and anxiety are considerably higher than those reported in previous studies focusing on terrorist events, such as the 9/11 attacks and other attacks,” noted clinical psychologist Prof. Yossi Levi-Belz, who chairs the Lior Tsfaty Center for Suicide and Mental Pain Studies at the Ruppin Academic Center, Israel and led the study.
The team found that the traumatic events had a more considerable impact on those already struggling with psychological difficulties. Specifically, the findings show that one of the robust predictors of psychological burden in the aftermath of the attack was the presence of pre-October 7 symptoms of probable PTSD, depression, and GAD.
Suffering from PTSD symptoms before the attack was found to double the risk of probable PTSD. These findings suggest the role that pre-attack psychological symptoms may have had in increasing the risk of short-term PTSD beyond demographic risk factors and direct exposure to the attack.
The authors said that the nationwide cohort study dealt with the limitations of previous research by using a prospective study design to evaluate the impact of the attack. The researchers used a wide range of probable outcome measures including PTSD, depression, and GAD, assessing a cohort of Israeli citizens, twice – six or seven weeks before the attacks and five to six weeks after the attacks.
Martin Blackham Israel First TV Program www.israelfirst.org