As of November 22, Agence France-Presse indicated that an estimated 5,300 children had died in Gaza since the start of the conflict in Palestine, an average of 115 children killed every day. Also, it was reported that, according to UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell, children in Gaza were in extreme danger due to catastrophic living conditions and that a million of them were facing the food insecurity.
As a child psychiatrist, I must admit that these figures give me chills… I have worked for 25 years in the public network and I have repeatedly seen traumatized children here in Quebec, often already in the care of the network. of Youth Protection, but not always. I have seen time and again the deleterious effect of trauma on the mental health of young people, and very often also on their physical health. The impact on these young people is all the more profound and lasting when they have already been weakened by previous harmful experiences.
According to the literature, one of the most protective elements for children exposed to traumatic events remains that of good parental mental health as well as active support from the community. Throughout my career, I have also been able to observe the significant limits of our interventions as clinicians to counter the impacts of early adverse experiences on the developmental trajectory of young people, while they are in the process of constructing themselves. and their relationship to the world.
In his latest work (Forty thieves in emotional deprivation, 2023), Boris Cyrulnik recalls the highly deleterious effects of chronic trauma on personality development, including an inability to feel empathy, difficulty managing impulses and anger, difficulty reflecting and mentalizing one’s experience. emotional, a tendency to act without thinking. The pioneers of attachment theory had already highlighted for several decades the links between severe behavioral disorders, delinquency and adverse childhood experiences.
Little humans are indeed unique in that they are not “finished” at birth and their brain must continue to develop for several years after their birth, i.e. up to a few years after reaching adulthood.
We are in fact the only mammals who are born so immature and so dependent on those around us to be able to survive. It is the stimulations of our environment, and particularly social interactions with other humans, that allow us to continue our healthy brain development and become full-fledged humans.
So, I wonder: what will happen to all these polytraumatized children in Gaza, whose parents are often just as traumatized as they are? These children who inherit a community fabric in tatters and who for several weeks have not had anything to drink, something to eat, something to sleep peacefully or a place to feel safe. These children who have lost family members, friends, neighbors, their school, their routine of life… What kind of humans will they become when they are adults?
I wonder if we will one day collectively pay the price in some way for all these atrocities committed against the children of Gaza. We could also say the same thing about the children of the Congo, the indigenous children stolen from their parents or the Israeli children that Hamas took hostage on October 7 and some of whom were returned to their families on Friday.
The future of polytraumatized children must concern us and clearly constitutes a challenge for our common humanity.