The music was still playing when the sky cracked open.
At 6:29 a.m., Nir Fridrih looked up from the Nova Festival stage and saw what no one should ever see — missiles arching across the desert dawn.
Within minutes, the dancing stopped, and the road out became a death trap. Two years later, the echoes of that morning still chase him through sleepless nights in Ashkelon. His business would have closed if not for a loan from SparkIL.
“I see a psychologist,” Fridrih told The Media Line. “I take drugs. But still, I feel traumatized. I have anxiety. The images keep me up at night. I am not calm. Sometimes, I feel a lack of control.”
Two years after the Oct. 7 massacre, Israel is living in a state of national trauma.
“There are too many front lines,” said Yarden Abarbanel, head of Teva’s Support the Soul program. “It’s not just the soldiers, it’s all of us.”
Ahead of Rosh Hashanah, Teva released new findings on the mental health of Israelis since Oct. 7. The survey, commissioned by Teva and conducted with Sapio Research, revealed that while more than 70% of Israelis are open to seeking professional psychological help, 41% of therapists say at least half their patients are not receiving enough therapy sessions.
Three-quarters of respondents said they struggle with sleep and concentration, while nearly as many reported emotional eating. Feelings of helplessness were reported by 79%, and 85% said they experience existential fear and anxiety. Moreover, 86% said the ongoing captivity of hostages in Gaza has negatively affected their mood.
Finding help has become its own battle. Seven in 10 Israelis said they face obstacles accessing adequate care. Nearly a third (31%) cited stigma or cost, and about one in five (20%) pointed to a shortage of therapists and available appointments. As a result, roughly half of those who want treatment have yet to begin it.
At the same time, therapists themselves are in crisis.
Since Oct. 7, more than twice as many mental health professionals have been dedicating most of their hours to trauma cases. Nearly half have had to turn away new patients. Overall, 97% of therapists report challenges in their work, and 88% acknowledge a decline in their own mental well-being.
“Therapists are on the front line,” Abarbanel said. “After two years, they carry the weight of the country’s trauma.”
Abarbanel explained that mental health professionals are suffering from emotional overload, having been exposed to too many devastating stories. They have little time to care for themselves and lack the necessary professional support systems.
“There is no literature about it,” she said. “It’s the first time they’ve seen those kinds of events. And this is hard.”
The situation among soldiers is equally severe. According to the Ministry of Defense, more than 20,000 soldiers have been injured since the start of the war, and more than half (56%) are coping with emotional wounds. About 4,000 have already been officially recognized as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and another 9,000 are in the process of being recognized.
In total, the Defense Ministry said that of the 82,000 injured soldiers and reservists currently being treated by the rehabilitation system, approximately 31,000 — or 38% — are seeking help for emotional injuries.
And the numbers are still incomplete. According to Gila Tolub, executive director of Israel’s Collective Action for Resilience (ICAR) Collective, for every diagnosed case of PTSD, there are an estimated 1.4 cases of depression.
“People are very much focused on trauma, but trauma also impacts depression, anxiety, addiction and eating disorders. All those issues have been climbing in the last two years,” Tolub told The Media Line. “And this is across the board — not just with soldiers.”
The situation is expected to worsen.
“There are a lot of things we won’t see until the war is over,” Tolub said.
She explained that society tends to “push away” specific images and experiences as a form of self-protection. However, those buried emotions often resurface later.
“There are many things that will start when the war ends, so this is something that we need to be aware of,” Abarbanel added.
For example, while suicides have actually declined during the war, experts warn of a potential spike of up to 30% among soldiers who have fought since Oct. 7.
The Ministry of Defense has also projected troubling trends.
Based on its data, officials estimate that by 2028, as many as 100,000 veterans will be recognized as having war-related injuries, and at least half of them will suffer from emotional wounds.
Moreover, according to ICAR, 75% of individuals with PTSD are at risk of developing alcohol-related problems or other addictions, adding yet another layer to Israel’s growing mental health crisis.
ICAR highlighted several systemic challenges, foremost among them the absence of a real continuum of care. NGOs, HMOs and the Ministry of Defense operate within their own frameworks, often leaving those in distress to navigate the system alone.
Yet ICAR also identified a source of hope: technology, described as a “potential connector.”
While there is no silver lining to two years of war, the bitter lessons of conflict may yield something meaningful: innovation born from necessity.
“Israel is a great sandbox for mental health technologies,” said Inbar Blum, director of planning and development in the Growth Division of the Israel Innovation Authority.
Blum explained that companies developing mental health solutions increasingly choose to test their technologies in Israel before expanding to international markets, where they face similar post-trauma challenges.
According to her, roughly 30% of the authority’s investments are allocated to healthcare, and a growing portion is now specifically directed at mental health.
Even before Oct. 7, Israel’s mental health system was under strain. Long wait times, a shortage of therapists and a lack of coordination between service providers made accessing care difficult. In many cases, no consistent methods were available for evaluating the effectiveness of treatments.
The Innovation Authority said that the rising demand for mental health care and these systemic shortcomings created an opportunity to rethink how treatment is delivered by developing new models and embracing technology that can improve quality and accessibility.
To meet this goal, the authority and the Ministry of Health launched a dedicated fund to build the infrastructure necessary for integrating technology into mental health services. The initiative supports the development of tools to measure and evaluate treatment outcomes, encourages the adoption of digital therapy platforms, and helps weave technological innovation into Israel’s public health system — creating a new framework designed to meet the country’s postwar mental health needs.
Blum said the program’s goal is to support startups developing new solutions and pilot sites testing them — whether in hospitals, resilience centers or therapeutic settings.
“This innovation should not only reach cyber but the people who need it most,” Blum told The Media Line.
The Innovation Authority has also assisted several Israeli companies in submitting proposals to Horizon Europe’s mental health innovation program. Winners are expected to be announced by the end of the year.
“Europe and the world understand that Israel has strength in this arena,” Blum said.
She added that a wave of new startups has emerged directly from war experiences, including in the fast-growing field of trauma tech.
A lot of new ideas came out of the war,” Blum explained. “People in reserves met new people, went out of their comfort zones and met new people beyond their immediate reach. And new ideas came up, and companies are being formed and funded.”
According to Blum, there has been a 60% increase in applications to the authority’s ideation program — an early-stage initiative that helps turn promising ideas into viable startups.
In Israel’s south, a new Resilience and Health Innovation Hub has also been established to address the country’s most pressing psychological and community challenges. The hub focuses on developing solutions for mental resilience, crisis management, disaster preparedness, safe cities, social cohesion, health care and education.
The Resilience Accelerator operates under Hamitbah — the Technological Center for Security and Resilience — and is funded by the Israel Innovation Authority.
Blum said the accelerator aims to nurture young startups and help established companies put their products into real-world use.
“They’re looking for more growth for late-stage companies in the mental health field so they can implement the technologies,” Blum said.
The Media Line explored several Israeli startups noted by the Innovation Authority that have emerged or grown since Oct. 7, including Haifa-based GrayMatters Health.
The company, according to its website, is developing and marketing an interventional psychiatry platform built on proprietary fMRI-informed biomarkers — the first of its kind to create digital, brain-region-specific biomarkers for mental health.
Unlike traditional biomarkers that measure tissue to detect disease, GrayMatters’ technology measures brain activity linked to depression and PTSD, offering a new window into how trauma affects the mind.
Another company making waves in this space is Mentally, an AI-powered mental health platform now being tested at Sheba Medical Center and in resilience centers across Israel.
Developed in collaboration with Microsoft and KPMG, the system, called LIV, is designed to help clinicians diagnose and treat PTSD and other mental health conditions using advanced data analysis and real-time insights.
Mentally’s technology is a clinical decision-support tool that integrates with hospital systems, analyzes patient information and generates personalized treatment recommendations. According to its website, it can also detect subtle shifts in voice or facial expression that may signal distress, making complex psychiatric care faster, more innovative and more responsive to the needs of both doctors and patients.
This article is written by Maayan Hoffman and reprinted with permission from The Media Line