An unpredictable childhood predicts greater psychological distress during the Israel-Hamas war

A study conducted in Israel during the 2023 war with Hamas found that individuals reporting greater early-life unpredictability tended to experience a greater increase in psychological distress during the war. They also tended to have greater psychological distress and emotion dysregulation before the war started. The paper was published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.

Early-life unpredictability is the degree to which a child’s environment is unstable, inconsistent, or difficult to predict over time. It includes experiences such as frequent changes in caregivers, household chaos, inconsistent routines, or sudden shifts in resources and safety. Unlike simple deprivation, unpredictability is about variability rather than just a lack of input or support.

Research in developmental psychology shows that children are highly sensitive not only to what they receive but also to how stable those conditions are. High unpredictability can shape cognitive and emotional development, especially systems related to learning, stress, and decision-making. For example, children in unpredictable environments may become more vigilant and reactive to potential threats. They may also prioritize short-term rewards over long-term planning, which can be adaptive in unstable contexts.

Study author Ohad Szepsenwol and his colleagues note that life history theory interprets the changes in cognition and emotional responses driven by unpredictability as strategic responses to environmental conditions, creating what is called a “fast” life history strategy. This is a strategy that prioritizes rapid growth, early reproduction, and the production of more offspring through increased mating effort, but heavily discounts long-term outcomes, as the future is unpredictable. They conducted a study in which they followed Israeli adults for over six years, looking into emotion dysregulation and psychological distress before and during the Israel-Hamas war.

Study participants were 720 Israeli Jews who joined a longitudinal study in January 2018 and completed subsequent assessments in April 2022, December 2023, and March 2024. They were between 18 and 64 years of age at the start of the study, with the average age being 43. On average, they had 1.75 children, and nearly 53% of the participants were men.

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Study participants completed assessments of psychological distress (the SCL-10R), emotion dysregulation (the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale – 18), and early-life unpredictability. The assessment of early-life unpredictability consisted of six questions asking about three types of unpredictability experienced during the first 10 years of life: changes in economic circumstances, moving to a different environment, and changes inside the family.

In the 2023 and 2024 assessments, participants also answered four items assessing direct exposure to the Israel-Hamas war in the prior three months. They answered how frequently they experienced sirens and alerts, heard explosions, felt their lives were in danger, and felt family members’ lives were in danger.

Results showed that more pronounced early-life unpredictability was associated with greater psychological distress and emotion dysregulation before the war. Both of these characteristics increased significantly across the board after the war started. However, the spike in psychological distress after the start of the war was much stronger in individuals who experienced higher early-life unpredictability.

Interestingly, the increase in emotion dysregulation during the war was not dependent on early-life unpredictability; participants’ ability to regulate their emotions worsened at roughly the same rate regardless of their childhood environment. Furthermore, among individuals directly exposed to the war, early-life unpredictability was associated with a substantially greater increase in psychological distress.

“These findings indicate that the Israel-Hamas war exerted an emotional and psychological toll on Israeli adults. They further suggest that early-life unpredictability is a general risk factor for emotion dysregulation and psychological distress in adulthood and predicts worse mental health in war-exposed individuals,” the study authors concluded.

The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the links between childhood unpredictability and psychological characteristics later in life. However, it should be noted that the assessment of early childhood unpredictability was based on the retrospective recall of childhood experiences provided by adult participants, leaving room for recall bias to affect the results. Additionally, the researchers noted that their sample focused exclusively on Israeli Jews, highlighting a need for similar research among Arab citizens of Israel and Palestinians in Gaza, who have also been profoundly affected by the conflict. Finally, the design of the study does not allow strict causal inferences to be derived from the findings.

The paper, “Associations between early-life unpredictability and mental health during the Israel-Hamas war,” was authored by Ohad Szepsenwol, Dvora Shmulewitz, Vera Svirksky, and Mario Mikulincer.