At a farm in central Israel, a former soldier feels the cold skin of a snake wrapped around his forearm. For a moment, the world shrinks. The noise of a passing drone, a helicopter in the distance—the triggers for flashbacks to Gaza—fade into the background. "I'm here with the snake right now," he says. It is the only thing that brings him peace.
This is the new frontline of Israel's longest war—one not against Hamas, but against an enemy within: a spiraling mental health crisis that is claiming the lives of Israeli soldiers not with bullets, but through suicide. The death of Tomas Adzgauskas, a Lithuanian-Israeli sniper commander who took his own life after confessing to acts he "cannot be forgiven" for, is a stark, individual tragedy in a devastating national pattern.
A Crisis in Numbers
The data paints a picture of an army under profound psychological strain. A report by Israel's Knesset Research and Information Center revealed that between January 2024 and July 2025 alone, 279 soldiers attempted suicide. Of those attempts, 36 resulted in death.
The Israeli Defense Ministry has documented nearly 11,000 soldiers suffering from "mental health injuries"—which include PTSD, anxiety, and depression—since the war began in October 2023.
This represents more than a third of all such injuries in Israel's conflicts since its founding nearly 80 years ago. To put the current suicide rate in perspective, the average number of soldiers dying by suicide per year in the decade before the war was 13. In 2024, that number rose to 21 soldiers.
Demographic | Contribution to Total Suicides (since 2017) | Key Factor
Compulsory Service Soldiers | 68% | Youth, identity formation, service stress
Reservists | 21% | Sudden call-up, disruption of civilian life, repeated deployments
Career Soldiers | 11% | Prolonged exposure, cumulative trauma
The Anatomy of Anguish: Beyond PTSD
While PTSD is a major driver, experts treating these soldiers describe a more complex constellation of wounds. The crisis extends beyond the classic symptoms of flashbacks and hypervigilance.
A key concept is "moral injury"—a profound psychological distress resulting from actions, or failures to act, that violate one's own deeply held moral or ethical code. Soldiers like Adzgauskas expressed torment over things they "did that cannot be forgiven." Psychologist Tuly Flint explains: "Soldiers come back asking themselves who are they after what they’ve seen and done, what kind of people are they?"
This is compounded by a crushing sense of hopelessness and a loss of purpose for soldiers who have lived for months in a high-stakes combat environment only to return to a civilian life that feels meaningless. Many veterans report an inability to connect with family and friends who cannot comprehend their experiences, leading to isolation and broken relationships.
Systemic Strain and the Fight for Help
The sheer scale of this crisis has overwhelmed the military's established support systems, which, until recently, had a successful suicide prevention program in place. The program, implemented in 2006, focused on reducing weapon access, de-stigmatizing help-seeking, and integrating mental health officers into units. It had reduced the IDF's suicide rate by 57% between 2006 and 2012.
However, this war's unprecedented length and intensity have exposed critical gaps. The army is "scrambling to address the crisis," mobilizing hundreds of mental health officers and establishing hotlines. Yet, the system is reportedly strained, impacting the entire national health infrastructure. A telling statistic from a Knesset report found that of the soldiers who died by suicide, only six had seen an IDF mental health professional in the two months before their deaths.
Stigma remains a formidable barrier. Soldiers report a culture where admitting psychological weakness is seen as letting down the unit. One reservist and therapist noted that change only happens when commanders explicitly give soldiers permission to seek help.
Grassroots organizations, like the Back2Life farm where soldiers work with rescue animals, have emerged to fill the void, offering alternative therapies and a community of shared experience. Meanwhile, traumatized soldiers have camped outside Israel's parliament to protest bureaucratic delays in receiving care and to demand that PTSD be recognized as a combat injury equal to a physical wound.
The Aftermath and a Nation's Future
For every soldier lost to suicide, countless more are struggling. As Tuly Flint warns, "Those victims of war, if not treated, lose the potential for personal and social development... and may become a burden on themselves, their families and society".
Tom Wasserstein, whose brother Roi—a military nurse who served over 300 days in Gaza—died by suicide, frames it with heartbreaking clarity: "If one soldier dies from his wounds in combat, and another takes his own life because of what he has experienced, it means they have both been wounded. One by a bullet, the other in his head—but it is still a wound. It is... an invisible wound".
As the guns may eventually fall silent in Gaza, Israel faces the daunting task of healing an army haunted not just by what was done to them, but by what they were required to do. The fight to save these soldiers from their own invisible wounds may be one of the longest and most critical battles of all.
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