The impact of chronic security stress and involvement in army service on women soldiers who return to civilian life
Researcher: Julie Cwikel
Department: Social work and Center for Women's Health Studies and Promotion
Faculty: Social Sciences
E-mail: jcwikel@bgu.ac.il
Today, with prolonged wars occurring all over the globe, more people have experienced war stressors, as soldiers, victims, family members or civilian populations. The effect of combat on women is an important issue to explore as women are involved in army service and are exposed to war as civilians. Our field site is Israel, a country with ongoing political conflict and wars, but the findings are relevant to all countries whose citizens have experienced war or related traumatic experiences. Traumatic memories can disrupt the adult capacities for education and job-training, employment, establishing stable intimate relations and parenting.
Thus it is imperative to develop ways of integrating stressful traumatic experiences. This can be achieved through adjusting autobiographical memories that reflect experiences that are stored as images through psycho-neurological mechanisms. Being central to human functioning, images contribute to the individual's ability to remain oriented in the world and to pursue goals and solve problems in the light of past memories. The projective nature of art enables these memories- images to be concretely addressed, and provides a basis for regulating memories of stress and trauma experiences.
We seek to validate a non-psychiatric image-based assessment tool that can be used to screen normative populations for signs of psychological distress generally and PTSD specifically after exposure to war and disaster related stressors. This Arts-Based Trauma Assessment (ABTA) draws on cognitive and visual components of stressful images and resilience capacities. It was developed during a period of active war under circumstances preventing its rigorous efficacy testing. In the current study, we propose to validate the ABTA with a variety of populations, most prominent among them being women. This will also enable an evaluation of the impact of army service on women and on those affected by armed conflict as civilians, an area lacking in empirical research
The impact of chronic security situations on the decision and duration of breast-feeding among women, mothers to first children
The literature suggests two alternative pathways for the effect of stress on initiation and duration of breast-feeding. One that stress negatively affects the ability to breastfeed and that women are unable to sustain breastfeeding over time. The second that women feel reassured and comforted by the physical closeness of breastfeeding and will prolong breastfeeding. This study seeks to examine these two mechanisms among women with varying exposures to security stress: around Gaza, in Beer Sheva where Operation Cast Lead affected the population and in Arad where the population was not directly exposed to security risks.
The effect of terror on tourism
Researcher: Aviad Israeli
Department: Hotel and Tourism Management
Faculty: Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and Management
E-mail: aviad@som.bgu.ac.il
Countries throughout the world derive a large part of their Gross National Product from the tourism and hospitality industry. Unfortunately, current times impose threats on these industries. One of the most significant threats is terror, which has been experienced at diverse levels and intensity by different countries. Historically, the Israeli hospitality and tourism industry has been subjected to cycles of war- and terror-related crises. These events provide an opportunity to study crises through case examples, to evaluate their impact on the hospitality industry and to investigate the crisis management practices and strategies employed at the business- and state-level. The findings may also assist in constructing effective crisis management strategies to cope with future crisis events.
The study of crisis management employs a questionnaire which evaluates crisis management practices according to their importance and usage. The questionnaire follows the structure of the Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) in order to evaluate what managers perceive as effective crisis management and to identify their actual crisis management. It should be noted that previous research found gaps between managers' perceptions about crisis management and their actual behavior. The findings suggest that managers do what they can and not necessarily what they should in times of crisis. Moreover, the findings suggest that policy makers do not always construct the most effective plan to cope with crises. One of the most consistent findings (in all sectors of the industry and in different countries) suggests that there is a mismatch between the government crisis management programs and the industry needs and difficulties.
Coping with stress situations
Researcher: Shifra Sagy
Department: Conflict Management and Resolution Program
Faculty: Social Sciences
Email: shifra@bgu.ac.il
The studies I have conducted in this field employ the salutogenic paradigm, which asks about resources and resilience factors of individuals and collective groups (family, community) in buffering stress reactions. Within this conceptual framework, I have studied stress responses of adolescents in various contexts of stress situations, some of them unique to the Israeli dynamic reality, such as the evacuation from Sinai settlements and from Gush Katif (Sagy & Antonovsky, 1986; Sagy, 2006), the assassination of Rabin (Sagy, 2002), Second Lebanon War and missile attacks on the Sderot area (Sagy & Lewensohn, 2009). Other studies have focused on chronic stress situations like child abuse (Sagy & Dotan, 2001), being a member of a minority group (Israeli – Arab adolescents) (Ayalon & Sagy, 2008), being an immigrant (Sagy, 2000), etc.
In these various stress studies, I have asked two principal questions: (A) What are the personal, familial and community resources which contribute to better coping with the stressors? (B) When are the coping resources significant in reducing emotional distress?
Based on these studies, I have developed a model (Sagy, 2002; Sagy, 2006; Sagy & Lewensohn, 2009) which is proposed to understand and to explain resilient reactions to stress in terms of the patterns of cross-situational profile. My research results put great emphasis on the chronic stressors, which were found to have more pervasive effects, rather than on a dramatic acute situation. It appears that this distinction is meaningful in understanding resilience resources in buffering stress responses. In chronic situations (without acute elements), personal and family factors can moderate distress reactions. However, in acute situations, the influence of these factors is reduced. The research findings also point to meaningful distinctions with applications to fieldwork (Sagy, 2002, 2006; Sagy & Lewensohn, 2009).
