Singer Ily Botner shares his family story at Knesset conference on dual recovery

At a Knesset conference titled "Dual Recovery, on mental health and addictions," singer and songwriter Ily Botner spoke about his personal experience living alongside family struggle. The event was held in the Knesset building and was initiated by MK Michal Woldiger, chair of the Knesset Labor and Welfare Committee, in cooperation with the "Families for Mental Health" association.

Botner said he had grown up with the issue almost as long as he could remember. "I grew up in a kibbutz, and my older brother, whom I really admired, and when the big crisis happened we experienced the full range of emotions, from shame and great difficulty and concealment to acceptance, internalization and growth. I wrote many songs about him," he said.

He described how the song "Shavim" was created, and then how the words for "Michtav Le'achi" came to him. Botner said his brother told him he had been fired from a car dealership, where people told him, "People like you are not wanted." After the call ended, Botner wrote him an empowering letter that later became a song.

The conference aimed to end the current split between public systems that force patients to navigate mental health and addiction services separately, making it hard to treat the person as a whole. It also sought to correct what organizers called the exclusion of families, often the only stable support for the person in crisis, from decision-making. Woldiger said, "As a family member myself, I know closely the meaning of accompanying a loved one on a complicated path," adding that dual diagnosis requires connecting systems and hearing those who live it, and that "it is time for the family voice to be heard and given weight."