Radical changes should be made in the way nearly 50,000 former soldiers are being treated for emotional trauma, a government committee recommended on Sunday.
The committee, which began operating last November, is headed by Prof. Shlomo Mor-Yosef. It reported its findings to the Defense and Finance ministries.
The committee should have been established at least a year earlier to deal with the skyrocketing cases of soldiers who are physically wounded and emotionally traumatized, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), from the ongoing wars since the October 7 massacre in 2023, Mor-Yosef said in the report.
In March 2025, the Defense Ministry estimated that 100,000 soldiers will have been wounded by around 2030. As the war continues and the number of wounded soldiers in Lebanon has increased, the new estimate for crossing that threshold has been moved forward to 2028.
Mor-Yosef’s committee said even though the Defense Ministry had already made many changes to streamline approving financial benefits and emotional treatment for soldiers, compared with prior to the October 7 massacre, the changes are nowhere near sufficient.
Instead, the committee concluded that the ministry must establish an almost completely independent authority to handle the issue.
The ministry, with about 25 subdivisions, cannot be counted on to move fast enough to handle the issue, Mor-Yosef said. Establishing a new authority, with its own budget, technological services, new resources, and authority to act without too many layers of red tape, would improve the situation, he said.
The budget for this issue had already jumped from about NIS 5 billion to NIS 10b. from 2023 to 2026, the committee said, adding that an additional NIS 2b. per year was likely needed, along with a one-time investment of more than NIS 500 million for the establishment of the new authority.
Proposed changes require new legal actions
Many of the changes recommended by the committee require new legal actions.
Given the upcoming election and the low likelihood that the Knesset can act fast enough on some of these thorny issues, Mor-Yosef recommended that the current government immediately pass new government regulations to authorize the changes more rapidly.
Unlike in past wars, where emotional traumas made up about 15% of claims filed, since 2023, nearly 50% of the war claims filed have included emotional trauma such as PTSD. About 25,000 claims have been filed relating to wars since 2023.
One major change the committee recommended is financing a weekly emotional trauma visit instead of once every two to three weeks.
While previous Defense Ministry announcements have talked about individualizing services from the ministry for each soldier harmed, including for PTSD, the new policy would invest in this more heavily, including increasing the budgets.
In addition, the ministry would provide an IDF representative whenever a harmed soldier appears before the committee, submitting requests for recognition and benefits. In the past, many soldiers have complained that the committee treats them as litigants by not showing enough sensitivity to their sacrifices and traumatic experiences.
Furthermore, the committee said dedicated clinics should be established in areas where medical centers receive PTSD patients, enabling former soldiers to be around other comrades in arms with similar issues, as opposed to being seen along with chronically traumatized patients who often come from different backgrounds and have different issues.
The Defense Ministry also said it would fund, negotiate, and organize the streamlining of more services for dealing with physical and emotional harm by digital processes and through the various large health insurance companies.
Artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities would also be used to move recognition and treatment processes along faster, it said.
Total claims of harm are now up to 87,000, with about 31,000 of them relating to emotional trauma and PTSD.
Of the claimants from the current war, 12,500, or about 50%, are above the age of 30; and nearly 16,000, or about 64%, are reservists. Women account for about 2,000 of the claimants.
AI in mental-health operations
The IDF and the Defense Ministry had made a major advance by utilizing AI to improve mental-health operations at medical centers handling soldiers with PTSD, The Jerusalem Post reported exclusively in January.
There is a full spectrum of treatments available to deal with symptoms – notably group-based, individual, and occupational therapies. One focus is sometimes simply helping individuals calm down in the event of experiencing a negative episode.
The IDF’s new medical AI unit has developed procedures for medical professionals to use EEG machines working with AI to provide feedback on individualized “calming cues.”
A soldier can now meet with a mental-health evaluator, who can use an EEG and AI, and then have a discussion.
There is research about whether exposure to a girlfriend or a beloved song during a rough episode has a better impact and improves stability and calmness, the unit’s commander told the Post.
AI can help figure out triggers for problems or for progress, he said.
Another area in which AI is assisting in mental health for soldiers is by helping to reduce the time that professionals spend on record-keeping, thus allowing them to invest more time in meeting with patients sooner and more often.
For example, without AI, mental-health professionals could spend a full hour analyzing a given set of records, during which they are not actually meeting with soldiers.