A cross-sectional study of psychache and coping strategies and therapeutic approaches among Palestinian university students during the Gaza Israeli war
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The prolonged Gaza-Israeli war has profoundly impacted the psychological well-being of Palestinian university students, manifesting in elevated levels of psychache-an intense psychological pain marked by despair, humiliation, and helplessness. Despite its established link to suicidal ideation, the relationship between psychache and coping strategies during wartime remains underexplored. This study aims to assess the prevalence and severity of psychache among Palestinian university students in the West Bank during the Gaza-Israeli war, and to identify the coping strategies employed. A cross-sectional study was conducted with 556 participants from various universities in the West Bank using convenience sampling method. Data were collected via online questionnaires, including the Psychache Scale, Orbach and Mikulincer Mental Pain Scale, and Coping Strategies Questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, t-tests, and ANOVA were used to analyze the data. The findings revealed that 10.1 to 13.5% of students experienced high psychache levels, while 38.8 to 41.2% displayed moderate levels. Factors such as marital status and study year were significantly related to psychache levels. The most prevalent coping strategy was diversion followed by reinterpreting, with catastrophizing being the least used. Psychache was positively correlated with maladaptive coping strategies, particularly catastrophizing (r = 0.69, p < 0.01). The study underscores the critical need for targeted mental health interventions among university students during war situations. Enhanced coping strategies and mental health support tailored to students' demographics and psychosocial context are essential for mitigating the impact of war on psychological well-being.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".