On Oct 6. Salma Shurrab said goodbye to her hometown without knowing it. Breaking her usual midnight curfew, she indulged in a late-night car ride. With her cousin, Rana Alghussain, in the passenger seat, Shurrab, 22, drove through Gaza City singing along to blaring pop music. “We literally said goodbye to every street,” she wrote in her journal, listing off street names and neighborhoods the duo drove through. “I’m so thankful that coincidence happened because it made me say goodbye to Gaza.
” ‘The trauma is persisting’ While war’s toll on mental health has become more researched since PTSD — posttraumatic stress disorder — was coined in the 1980s after veterans’ experiences in the Vietnam War, experts say that exposure to protracted and ongoing conflict poses distinct mental health challenges.