Long-Term Association between Political Imprisonment and Well-Being for Palestinian Men

What is it about?

This paper compares the long-term functioning of Palestinian men who were politically imprisoned by Israeli military forces to men who were not imprisoned among a large, representative sample of men in their 30s from Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Fully 26% of men had ever been politically imprisoned. Men who had been imprisoned early in their lives--in their teens or early twenties--showed no impairments in functioning compared to never-imprisoned men, with the exception of symptoms of traumatic stress. Men who had been politically imprisoned in the last six years, however, reported decrements in physical and mental health and in economic, political, and community functioning. Findings point to the value of going beyond the typical focus of studying the effects of traumatic experiences on mental health to also examine effects on other domains of functioning. Findings also point to the ability of Palestinian men, and possibly other politically imprisoned populations, to recover from the traumatic experience of political imprisonment.

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Why is it important?

Although human rights organizations document the number of Palestinian political prisoners held by the Israeli military at any given time, this is the first paper we know of to estimate the prevalence of ever having been politically imprisoned in a representative sample of all three areas of the occupied Palestinian territory: Gaza, East Jersusalem and the West Bank. Fully 26% of men aged 32 to 43 years were imprisoned by Israeli military forces for political reasons between 1987 and 2011. This equates to nearly 48,000 men in the full population. This study is one of the few studies to employ a comparison group of those not politically imprisoned and a population-based sample that allows for prevalence estimates of political imprisonment and generalizable results. Moreover, by not restricting the scope of adult functioning to the narrow lens of psychopathology, we were able to achieve a broad view on how life-long experience with political imprisonment reflects itself in the lives of individuals.