"I sit in a psychiatric hospital and talk about my traumas, about friends I've lost, about missiles that were fired at me. But only I am speaking.
"The rest of the people in the department, who suffer from disorders and mental illnesses unrelated to PTSD, look at me in alarm. Suddenly, someone who is involuntarily hospitalized runs from ward to ward, staff chases her and drags her by force. I'm a witness to it, and I know it could easily have been me. The slightest deviation from the boundaries - and in the second I am put in a closed ward. Her screams bring me back to the trauma."
"Here it's different", founder of Beit Mazen, Mickey Benjamin, photo: None
Moshe Cohen says this in a trembling voice, explaining why psychiatric wards are not suitable for people dealing with PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, or in short - shock. "It's different here."
"Here" is "Home in Nature," a new balancing house opened in Moshav Mata near Jerusalem, which focuses on treating combatants and victims of post-traumatic terror. It was founded by Mickey Benjamin (41) to provide these people with tools to cope with trauma. "For these patients, psychiatric hospitalization not only doesn't help, it can create trauma in itself. This place understands and accommodates them," he says.
"The maximum treatment suitable for everyone", Beit Mazen, photo: None
He probably knows what he's talking about, because he himself served in Shaked Givati during the second intifada, was shot in the chest and came out wounded body and soul. "Did you see how that tenant looked at his friend? Even one glance between the shocked has a lot of reinforcement."
Patients here are called "tenants." They are given dignity and tasks, given medication only when there is no other choice, and they undergo a process stemming from the assumption that there is no solution to the disorder, but only tools to deal with it.
These tools are provided by the many guides who visit the villa bathed in green: therapists of movement, breathing, music and psychodrama, psychologists who conduct about three individual treatments a week in addition to group therapy, a social worker and a psychiatrist. The residents arrive at the villa under the referral of a attending physician, and the cost of the stay and treatment is transferred to the house by the Ministry of Defense.
Eden Meiri sings about shell shock: "Hero of clichés" (archive)
The residents stay in the villa between one and three months. "We give the maximum treatment tailored to everyone, like in intensive care," explains Miki, "every month we sit down and fine-tune the treatment. Even after the period of stay at home is over, we continue to accompany them. They will always have someone to consult."
The treatment plan is built together with the resident. This is another difference between this place and psychiatric hospitalization: there are no assumptions from above, but a partnership in the path and the goal. But perhaps the most essential difference is in the way of treatment: at "At Home in Nature" they treat the 12-step method, familiar to us from addiction treatment. The measures were reformulated and adapted to post-traumatic stress disorder, but essentially based on the same principles.
"Most post-traumatic stress disorder patients are addicted, whether they admit it or not," explains one resident. "It's very difficult to deal with an attack, so you smoke something, drink, take a pill. But it's just a Band-Aid that helps point-by-point, and not in depth. You really have to touch the pain and go through it, without evading and without canceling the emotion."
It's not as simple as it sounds. Mickey and the above resident went to a medical committee last week, during which the resident had a seizure. "Suddenly a wave came. My muscles locked, I felt like I couldn't breathe, I wanted to get up and get out but my legs didn't respond. It happens to me in all kinds of situations - suddenly I hear an explosion that didn't happen, or if the neighbor is having a barbecue, the smell of charred meat brings me back there. If I'm alone, the chances of getting out are small. In the villa I get tools that ground me in the here and now. At the committee, I sprayed water on myself, and then I felt my body. At first it's hard, but slowly you learn to control reality."
The Second Intifada,
An inspection conducted by the Ministry of Health at the site unequivocally recommended that the Ministry of Defense "recognize this framework and use it for the treatment of shell shock." Today, the residents are directed to take care of it, and soon, they hope, the house will be designated as a supplier of the Ministry of Defense, which will ease the bureaucracy they face.
"I was injured in Operation Protective Edge, and I've been shocked ever since," explains Shira Ashkenazi, head of counselors at the house. "So I got addicted to work so I wouldn't stop and think, because I would immediately go back there, to battle. Here there is silence, which allows you to be detached on one side and dig in on the other. We don't talk about the trauma, but about coping with it. How I take my difficulty, breathe it in and can pass through it. It's not an easy plan, it takes courage – but it works."
Miki concludes: "The Ministry of Defense talks about the acute need to build 20 balancing houses, and that there is a dedicated budget for this. If only I had such a place when I was released, I would have been spared a great deal of suffering."
The 12 Steps for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Sufferers
1. We admitted that we were helpless about the effects of trauma on ourselves and our families—and that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. We have come to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity.
3. We have decided to surrender our desires and our lives to God's providence, as we understand Him.
4. We conducted a moral, thorough and fearless soul-searching of ourselves.
5. Confess to God, ourselves, and another person the exact nature of our faults.
6. We were fully prepared for God to remove these imperfections in our character.
7. We humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings.
8. We made a list of the people we hurt and were willing to atone for.
9. We have directly atoned to these people whenever possible, except when it would harm them or others.
10. We continued our personal soul-searching, and when we made a mistake, we admitted it immediately.
11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve the conscious relationship with God, as we understand Him, praying only to know His will for us and the power to carry it out.
12. After undergoing a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to post-traumatic stress disorder and apply these principles in all areas of our lives.
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