Trajectories of Distress Symptoms Among Israeli Civilians Following the October 7 Attack

The current study examines trajectories of distress symptoms across five time points during the 10-month “Iron Swords” War between Israel and Gaza. Participants (N = 957) were adult Israeli Hebrew speakers who responded to all five assessments. Latent growth mixture modeling indicated a three-class trajectory model: (a) resilience (59%) characterized by mild initial distress that decreased slightly but steadily over time; (b) moderate-stable (33%) characterized by moderate initial distress that remained relatively unchanged; and (c) emerging-chronic (8%) characterized by relatively high initial distress that steadily increased over time. Logistic regression in a conditional model indicated that participants in the resilient group were less likely to be female, single/divorced, and more likely to be orthodox and supportive of the government than those in the moderate-stable group. Resilient participants were also less likely to be female and more likely to be married than those in the emerging chronic group. Finally, the participants in the emerging-chronic group were less likely to be married than those in the moderate-stable group.