“Until someone with post-traumatic stress is on the verge of death, no one looks at him”

Yotam and Linoi’s love story began ten years ago. She was running a coffee cart in the Bahadim City military complex. He, a regular-service logistics NCO, came there for a course. Every morning for a full month, he came to drink coffee at her stand, and his attempts to woo her were impossible to miss. His bearded appearance put her off a little at first, but as they got to know each other, the walls came down and love ignited. Within three months he proposed, and within six months they were already under the chuppah. Today, Linoi Gerbi, 33, is waging a daily, exhausting and nerve-racking battle for her home, for her two children, a son aged 8 and a daughter aged 6, and for her husband, Yotam Benayahu, 34, the man who returned from combat but, in many ways, was left behind. Yotam is dealing with severe post-traumatic stress as a result of his military service. The latest war, to which he was called up on October 7 at 10 a.m., was the official seal on what had been simmering beneath the surface since Operation Protective Edge. Yotam began the war evacuating bodies in Be’eri, continued as a D9 driver in Lebanon, and from there entered Gaza for many long months of demolishing buildings under constant fire. He was saved several times from shots fired at him, until he was wounded. After undergoing rehabilitation, he chose to return to the army, to his unit and to his friends. In June 2024, after eight intense months, he came home for an extended break. Two weeks after he returned, he tried to take his own life. It was the first of five attempts. “We were at a Friday night dinner and suddenly my sister shouted, ‘Yotam sent me a video.’ You can see him there taking a box of migraine pills and putting them in his mouth. I felt like I couldn’t move.”

Now Linoi is opening a window into the unthinkable reality of the “invisible women,” the partners of people with post-traumatic stress, who find themselves functioning as caregivers and protectors, while the state, she says, simply does not see them. “I feel like I’m constantly in a battle for my home,” she says. “People tell me, ‘It’s okay, it’ll pass.’ They don’t understand the complexity, that the post-trauma is here to stay, it doesn’t leave.”

How has life looked since the war?

“Completely new lives. Before, we liked going out, going to clubs. Today if we get to an event, after ten minutes he can tell me, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ There are days of rage attacks and days of depression. Suddenly a small word can set him off, or he can have bouts of trembling, or he can cry all day. Yotam is a good man, the husband every woman would want, I can’t give up on him. He went to war for all of us until the moment it caught him. He didn’t ask for this for himself, he didn’t do it on purpose. I can’t leave him.”

Between the cigarette and the bed, the couple lives in Yeruham. Linoi, a cosmetician by profession, suffers from chronic arthritis, an inherited disease that both of their children have also been diagnosed with. The illness causes her physical difficulty and she now works only occasionally and receives a disability allowance. Yotam also has not worked since returning from reserve duty. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress and receives an allowance from the Defense Ministry. Before the war, Linoi says, “we were in a good place. Yotam left the army to help me with our son. He found a job at a solar company in Sderot, got up at 5 a.m., hitchhiked and took buses, came back at night. They appreciated him at work, he advanced, got a car, earned well. I worked odd jobs. We were staying afloat.”

How was your relationship before the war?

“There was great love, and Yotam made sure to express it, to court me. He would bring flowers, small gifts, suddenly prepare a meal with candles. It was a period in which we built ourselves, our life. ואז came October 7.”

Yotam went to war, as noted, with untreated psychological distress in the background from Protective Edge. “He lost a lot of friends there,” she says. “There were nights when he would wake up and say he’d had a nightmare. But we didn’t attach importance to it. It wasn’t like now, there was no awareness of post-traumatic stress.”

“People tell me, ‘It’s okay, it’ll pass.’ They don’t understand that the post-trauma is here to stay, it doesn’t leave.”

From October 7 and for eight months, Yotam came home only rarely. “When he would come for a few hours of respite, he really didn’t have the strength,” Linoi says. “He was a present father before the war, playing with the children, enjoying them, and suddenly he wasn’t there. I did everything alone. My parents live next to me, but my mother is disabled and can’t help.”

Didn’t you say anything to him?

“I spoke to him and he said, ‘Take everything from me, just don’t take away the reserve duty. That’s what drives me, it’s good for me. I have to be with my friends, there’s no way they’ll fight alone, there’s no way something will happen to them and I won’t be there.’ When he would go out on leave, he couldn’t find himself. He would go back and forth between the cigarette and the bed. Always crying, always sad. We didn’t know what was happening, we didn’t know who could help us. In the end Yotam turned to the army himself, and only then did they assign him a casualty officer.”

The first suicide attempt happened on Friday evening. “I was with the children at my parents’ house for Friday dinner, and Yotam stayed at home because he didn’t want to come. Suddenly my sister shouted, ‘Come see, Yotam sent me a video.’ In the video you can see him taking a box of migraine pills that were mine and putting them in his mouth. I felt like I couldn’t move. I called the casualty officer. My niece and I ran toward the house, I went into a neighbor’s place and asked him to open our house, I was afraid of what I would find there. We found him partly conscious.”

Yotam was hospitalized for a stomach washout. A few days later he was sent for four months to a “balanced home,” a therapeutic framework that serves as an alternative to psychiatric hospitalization. “It hit me hard,” Linoi says. “Why are you doing this when you have a wife and children and a home? Why are you giving up? I told myself it was a period, that I would grit my teeth until he came back home and maybe, finally, he would be my husband again. It was hard, the children didn’t understand what was happening. No one explained anything to me and no one gave me guidance.”

The second suicide attempt happened two months after Yotam returned from the balanced home. “Each time I caught it in time when he had the pills in his hands,” she says. “He said, ‘I want to end this, I’m tired of it, I don’t want you all suffering because of me.’ It’s more of a cry for attention, but I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t been there.

“In one case he was sitting in the kitchen crying with a glass full of pills while all of us were at home. I knocked the glass out of his hand. I said, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ I hid all the pills in the house. My psychologist says you don’t hide pills, that someone who wants to die will die. I said to her, ‘You’re right, but I’ll do everything so that doesn’t happen.’ Even in my sleep, if I hear he got up to go to the bathroom, I ask, ‘Where are you?’ and ‘What are you doing?’ I always have my eyes on him.”

After two suicide attempts, Yotam was sent by a social worker to a “safe house.” “It’s a place you go to for 24 hours to a week after a severe attack. He was there several times, they balance him with pills.

“Today, there are days when he gets up happy and laughing and I say, ‘How nice,’ and then the rage attacks come. Sometimes I say, ‘Where is this going? I just don’t have the strength to contain it anymore.’ The whole house is affected by his situation.”

And how do you feel through all this time?

“Sometimes I have panic attacks. I can sink into bed with trembling and stomach pains. At first I didn’t understand what was happening to me, and then I understood that I had overloaded myself, that the body is speaking everything it has gone through. When the attacks got worse, a friend introduced me to a psychologist. I’m being treated by her and it did me good to unload everything I’d been through. She guides me and shows that there is light at the end of the tunnel. The conversations with her helped me peel away the layers of protection I had put on myself, and my love for Yotam, which had faded a little, came back.”

The real turning point for Linoi came about two months ago, when she was introduced to the “A Place for You” community of the Friends of the Disabled Veterans of the IDF organization, which runs support groups for women of people with post-traumatic stress. “At first I was embarrassed to join the group,” she says. “I didn’t want anything else to burden my soul, I didn’t want any more treatment. But it’s a place that allows me to let go. We meet, talk a little about what we’ve been through, give each other tips.”

What does it give you, meeting women who are going through exactly the same thing?

“It’s the feeling that you’re not alone, that your case is not the worst, that there are worse ones. We have common ground and there is understanding of what each woman is going through. It’s not like a friend outside who says, ‘Everything’s fine, it’ll pass,’ without understanding. In the group, for example, I hear about families saying, ‘We’re not inviting you over on Friday so he won’t explode and ruin the table.’ Post-trauma loves Friday night dinners. That was true for us too. Yotam would say, ‘The devil stands in front of me on Fridays.’

“There are women of people with post-traumatic stress who don’t take care of themselves. I want to tell them: it’s not shameful, you can bring it into the light. Put everything aside and come to the group, it really helps.”

When the question of pain and frustration is directed at the system, Linoi’s eyes fill with anger. She feels the state abandoned reserve soldiers and their families at the most critical moments and left them dependent on the goodwill of donors and information passed from mouth to mouth.

What do you feel the state missed along the way? What should have been done?

“More awareness, more response, not letting them reach the state they reached. In the two weeks before the first suicide attempt, Yotam was looking for someone to talk to, someone to answer him, he felt he wasn’t well. He has good friends from the reserves, but everyone has their own scars and there’s no one to unload onto. Until a person is on the verge of death, no one looks at him, and that’s sad. They don’t look at us, the women, either. Everything we get, retreats, fun days, it’s all from donations.”

What keeps you strong today?

“Once I could cry over the life I have. Today faith keeps me going, and also the children, the friends and the people around us who know how to help. I feel comfort, that there are still people giving us a hand.”

Don’t judge the woman. Help her.

The “Strong in the Rear” program of the “A Place for You” community, part of the Friends of the Disabled Veterans of the IDF organization, accompanies the partners of people dealing with post-traumatic stress and is guided by professionals in the field. Alongside the group meetings, participants take part in content and empowerment workshops, trips, community activities and more. “The goal is to see them, to give them a place,” explains Adi LeBron Attia, a clinical social worker, emotional therapist and trainer of professional teams on trauma. “We say that resilience is contagious, and the goal of the support group is that resilience will come through sharing.”

What do people talk about in the meetings?

“This is not a group that is only about pain. Yes, there is a lot to cry and hurt about: I didn’t choose this, I had this husband and now he is different, and I need to choose him again and that’s not easy. There are questions, like how my life will look from now on, but when you suddenly meet other women there is a feeling that I can expand, I can be angry at him or expect him to do things, to take control of his life. I can set him a boundary, tell him it’s not pleasant when he yells at me and gets angry. The group gives this validation.”

Give examples.

“We had a case of a woman whose husband has had post-traumatic stress for many years, and the daughters stir things up for her. For example, he was not willing to let a professional into the house, and for years her air conditioner was broken, and there was no one to fix it. They gave her support, and at the next meeting she said, ‘Finally I have a working air conditioner at home,’ and everyone applauded her. The group manages to move women from where they were, and that is the goal, to show mobility, the ability to move.”

What do people not know about these women?

“That there are difficult situations they are in and they don’t always tell everything, that has to be taken into account. There are many families that judge the woman, sometimes they say to her, ‘He’s putting on a show.’ Instead, it would be better to ask, ‘What do you need help with?’ If you judge her, it will intensify the sense of loneliness she is already in.”

Don’t cope alone.

NATAL, the organization that helps victims of trauma from war and terror, has expanded its activities in recent years and also provides support to spouses. The organization offers women individual mental health treatment, accompanied by both partners, group settings, as well as yoga groups, running and community activities. At NATAL, they emphasize that the very act of seeking help and sharing is already a significant part of coping. The helpline is available 24/7 at 3362* and via chat on the website.