00:00You're watching around the world with me, Delano D'Souza. The headlines this hour.
00:07Commemorations held in Israel as the country marks two years since the October 7th attacks.
00:12It was the worst targeting of Jews since the Holocaust.
00:16Donald Trump's peace plan for Gaza currently being negotiated in Cairo hopes mounting a deal will be reached to end the suffering in the enclave and Israeli hostages can be returned.
00:26And France's Prime Minister Tass with the near-impossible mission of reaching out to political parties to break the deadlock.
00:33The latest impasse isolating French President Emmanuel Macron even further.
00:50But first, it's been two years since the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
00:55Commemorations held this Tuesday to mark when Hamas fighters descended into southern Israel and wreaked havoc.
01:021,200 Israelis, mainly civilians, were killed.
01:05215 others were taken hostage and they included four nationals.
01:09There are hopes that the current ceasefire deal on the table can be finalized and the remaining hostages and the deceased can be brought back home.
01:17Earlier today, many gathered at the site of the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel.
01:22Now it's like you have a big hole in the house.
01:28Everything is, it's not the same.
01:31It can't be the same.
01:32Three of our beloved friends, unfortunately, died here.
01:38Sean Davideshvili, Evgeny Postel, and Lyotkacz.
01:44Three of our friends.
01:46And today we're mentioning the two years from the event and still we cannot capture it like believe that it really happened.
01:58She was so, so alive and so colorful and so intense that the house is much quieter and it was like yesterday.
02:15We can now bring in Damien Halperin, Head of Psychiatric Support at SafeHeart.
02:23It's an NGO launched to treat the survivors of the Nova Music Festival.
02:27Damien, thank you so much for joining us on the program today.
02:30Now I'm sure every patient you treat has a different story, but what are some of the common symptoms you're seeing in survivors?
02:38Hi, thank you for inviting me.
02:43I appreciate the common symptoms we see in survivors is mainly PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, which a lot of variations of symptoms from various clusters.
03:00But basically, this is the clinical situation we encounter even two years after the attack.
03:07So that's what we're dealing with.
03:10And how does this PTSD manifest itself in what I'm assuming is a very young population who you're dealing with, who attended this festival?
03:20Well, first of all, it's very important to understand, as you say, that most of the people, the survivors, were young people or young people at the moment of the attack.
03:34And this caused like a break in their normal professional or social development.
03:44And so it's a very sensitive moment in their lives.
03:48And therefore, the rehabilitation process that we try to engage with and that we try to promote and the treatment is made difficult by this complex stage in their lives.
04:03When you say it caused a break, what do you mean?
04:08Are they scared to listen to electronic music?
04:11Are they scared to go to festivals?
04:14Can you expand on that?
04:16So PTSD, basically, not only in this context, in every context, the main feeling that is the basis for the development of this disorder and this pathology is the feeling of fear, intense fear and imminent death.
04:37What happens is that this fear is that this fear is maintaining the body as a kind of memory of what happened and is coming about in various ways and has a lot of control on the patient's life.
05:01Therefore, therefore, you see these kinds of symptoms of re-experience, the fear comes back in different ways or hyper-harusal, hyper-reactivity, this memory of the fear in the body, in the mind, disturbs the functioning and the capacity to rehabilitate and to function normally in society.
05:28Now, this music festival was a rave.
05:31There was electronic music being played.
05:34I'm not condoning drug use here, but a study suggests that MDMA may have protected survivors of the NOVA attack from trauma.
05:44Can you explain to us why?
05:46Well, first of all, it's important to understand who goes to celebrate life, to these parties, to dance and use music, community dance, maybe psychedelic substances to enjoy.
06:03To understand these people is, first of all, to understand that these people have common values of solidarity, peace, tolerance, and this absurd, horrific encounter between extreme cruelty and violence.
06:20And this specific population makes it very, makes all this event particular.
06:29Now, psychedelics, you can, we have to relate to psychedelics, not less as substances, more as psychedelic experiences.
06:37And then you see, you, you, you, you see all kinds of reactions and, and it's very difficult to generalize what happened there.
06:45But we, we investigate these things and saying that it protected or not is a bit early, but, you know, like it's maybe the first time in history that we can investigate psychedelics and trauma through this perspective and not the other way around.
07:00Meaning through clinical trials and taking people who have gone through a therapeutic trauma and giving them psychedelics, whether MDMA or other psychedelics in order to treat them.
07:11So it's another perspective and it's a bit too early to draw definite conclusion.
07:15I, I would not, it may, it may require a longer talk about this topic here.
07:21I'm just curious, are you, what sort of therapies are you using in your treatment?
07:26Are you using things like ketamine to treat people and get a hold, to get a hold of their trauma and address it?
07:36No, actually, this is not our perspective.
07:40This is not our approach.
07:41We're in safe heart.
07:43Safe heart, first of all, was created in order to give appropriate trauma, post trauma therapy, cognitive psychotherapy.
07:52And by people who are unknowledgeable, psychedelic friendly or psychedelic informed from the community, therapists.
08:02So this NGO was founded from the community for the community and the approach is psychedelically informed.
08:12It's not, we do not believe at this stage unless doing it very carefully in research, maybe settings to treat people with ketamine at this stage.
08:23The second thing that is very important is to understand that naive, naive patients who do not receive psychedelics and go to a psychedelic clinic to receive a treatment are not the same population as people taking psychedelics for parties.
08:38And so it's a very complex field and we do not engage with psychedelic assisted therapy.
08:46I understand.
08:47If I may answer your question.
08:48Now, it's not just people who attended the music festival or the kibbutz of near odds, but collectively, it seems Israeli society is still reeling from the trauma of two years ago.
09:01Will, do you think in your professional opinion, do you think that trauma can heal if there is a deal to end the war?
09:11Well, I'm not, I will not talk about healing the trauma.
09:19It's a, it's the, it's a long process of rehabilitation, maybe recovery.
09:24And the first, obviously the first step would be the end of this catastrophic war, which, which makes impossible to complete recovery of our, of our patients and many others.
09:38So this would be the first step, but it would not stop there.
09:43It would be a long process.
09:45And I think the society as a whole is a traumatic, traumatized society, not only in Israel.
09:51And I think we have to rethink also the field of psychedelics as what is the place of psychedelics in our traumatized society.
10:01And for this, maybe this, the courage of the Nova community, of the people, of the raves of, and the way they organize and they try to advance and invent new therapies and new solutions could be maybe a source of inspiration.
10:22And this is a, a larger debate, uh, that is interesting to approach at some point, uh, Damien Hapur, and we're going to have to leave it there.
10:31Thank you for joining us on the program today.
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