.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A patriarchal societal culture has continued to glorify children that return from prison as heroes, making it difficult for them to process their negative feelings.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Home arrest is also a time in which child detainees are psychologically traumatised. While this is mostly unique to cases in East Jerusalem, families will pay large sums of money to ensure that their child can stay at home as opposed to serving their entire sentence in a prison.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
During this period the family relationship can be severely strained. The parents must watch the child 24\/7 for fear that if they leave the house they will be detained again.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“They lose the image of parent as protector and see them as a prison warden,” Faraj told the Palestine Monitor.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“They don‘t have anything to do, the feeling of time is lost. Most go to sleep at five or six in the morning when everyone is out of the house, they feel safer this way, and they just want to kill time,” Faraj continued.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Additionally, children experience a great deal of anxiety and boredom while confined inside the house.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“There is a great sense of envy that the rest of the family can leave and he or she cannot, in comparison with an actual prison, at least there is some sense of comradery because you are all stuck inside together,” a representative from The PCC stated.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The PCC has also found that children who have been subject to detention experience frequent flashbacks, in many of these cases children have been reported counting to themselves at night like a prison guard. Additionally, these children engage in substance abuse from a young age, primarily chain-smoking.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
However, most pertinent is a sense of mistrust and fear within the entire community. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“Children are often incentivised and bribed by Israeli officials to rat out friends and family. For kids who don‘t have anything, they are vulnerable to these things,” Alzoughbi told the Palestine Monitor.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The PCC finds that children are often resistant to speak to mental health professionals because they do not trust the system, they feel as though it has failed to protect them. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The community is in a constant state of “hyper arousal and vigilance,” Tadros states, that pushes children deeper into social isolation.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“Children can also be subject to a suspended sentence in which after they are released from prison they are put on probation for a year and can be arrested again at any time. This is problematic because many live in friction zones, i.e. near settlements and where there are frequent clashes, so many avoid leaving their house altogether,” a representative from the DCIP told Palestine Monitor<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Both the PCC and Wi’am employ techniques of counselling children in group settings that channel children’s emotions through positive outlets, such as, field trips, art projects, and theatre performances.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“We find intervention in a clinical setting cause more anxiety for the child and it is more effective to connect them with the environment and nature, in an open setting, indirect intervention,” said Tadros.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Tadros finds that while there is still a stigma around mental health in the Palestinian community an increasing number of parents, children, and teenagers alike are seeking counselling. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“Trauma from [the] occupation in Palestine in itself is a very unique situation in which traditional diagnosis and criteria do not apply …We face triggers everywhere we look, just the traffic created by Qalandia checkpoint, for example, you lose three hours of your day, you are surrounded by separation walls, people take their anger out on each other, everything is unpredictable,” Tadros stated. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Retaining a sense of normalcy is key to coping with trauma.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“It must all work together from the community level, family, organisational network, and policies on a systematic level …psychological trauma here is way bigger than the individual, this collective trauma affects the whole social fabric of Palestine,” Tadros concluded.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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