\n<\/p>\n
After an intense bombardment struck near his home, five-year-old Jad Zohud suddenly lost his ability to speak.<\/p>\n
He is not alone. Across Gaza, specialists are reporting a rising number of children who can no longer speak following war-related injuries or psychological trauma.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n For some, the cause is physical \u2013 head injuries, neurological damage or blast trauma. For others, there is no visible wound. Their silence follows repeated exposure to violence that overwhelms their ability to process or communicate.<\/p>\n Child psychotherapist Katrin Glatz Brubakk, who has worked in Gaza twice with Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, describes it as \u201csilent suffering\u201d often hidden beneath the scale of the destruction.<\/p>\n At Gaza City\u2019s Hamad Hospital, doctors say cases of speech loss among children are increasing.<\/p>\n Dr Musa al-Khorti, head of the hospital\u2019s speech department, told Al Jazeera that in some cases, \u201ca child could lose the ability to speak entirely,\u201d referring to conditions such as selective mutism or hysterical aphonia, which is a functional loss of voice linked to extreme psychological distress.<\/p>\n The cases vary, but many follow a similar pattern: a sudden loss of speech after violence or injury.<\/p>\n Five-year-old Jad had no prior speech difficulties, his mother said, but after a bombardment near his home, he woke unable to speak \u2013 unable to form sounds or words.<\/p>\n Jad is not alone. Four-year-old Lucine Tamboura lost her voice after falling from the third floor of her home when a staircase, damaged by an Israeli air strike, collapsed beneath her.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fall affected her speech and caused partial paralysis in her arm and leg,\u201d her mother, Nehal Tamboura, told Al Jazeera. \u201cHer leg and arm recovered, but she still has trouble with speech. We are continuing her treatment for that.\u201d<\/p>\n Doctors warn that without sustained care, these conditions can have long-term effects on development, particularly when linked to psychological trauma.<\/p>\n Child psychotherapist Katrin Glatz Brubakk says children lose speech as a response to extreme trauma.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are children who have been exposed to extreme trauma and, without any medical cause, stop talking,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s always extreme trauma.\u201d<\/p>\n She describes children who have lost family members, witnessed death, been injured, or lived through repeated violence, where silence becomes the only way to cope.<\/p>\n \u201cAt some point, the world feels completely unpredictable, and the child is in acute danger,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s not a choice. It\u2019s a physical response.\u201d<\/p>\n Many enter what she calls a \u201cfreeze response\u201d, where the body shuts down under threat.<\/p>\n \u201cThe body says: I can\u2019t fight this. People can die. I can die. So the safest thing is to stay still,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s waiting until the world feels safe again.\u201d<\/p>\n But the impact goes beyond the loss of speech, she explains.<\/p>\n \u201cIf children stop playing and interacting, they stop learning and developing,\u201d she says. \u201cI call it cognitive war injuries.\u201d<\/p>\n She explains that prolonged trauma keeps the brain in survival mode: the amygdala \u2013 the brain\u2019s alarm system \u2013 remains alert, while systems responsible for learning and emotional regulation are suppressed.<\/p>\n \u201cEven when a child looks shut down, the nervous system is still on high alert,\u201d she says. \u201cOver time, that has very serious effects on development.\u201d<\/p>\n Brubakk says the scale and totality of trauma in Gaza is unlike anything she has seen in more than a decade of work.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been working in the field for 12 years, and there\u2019s nothing that can compare to Gaza. Nothing,\u201d she says. \u201cThere is nobody in Gaza now that\u2019s not affected.\u201d<\/p>\n She says Gaza is defined by a complete lack of safety.<\/p>\n \u201cBombs everywhere, everybody affected, everybody in danger \u2013 there is no safety.\u201d<\/p>\n This issue, she explains, is only exacerbated by the collapse of healthcare and essential services.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t get the help you need, physically or mentally, and you can\u2019t escape,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s nowhere to go. And this combination makes the impact so severe.\u201d<\/p>\n For Brubakk, the most overlooked consequence is not only the visible injuries, but what she calls a \u201csilent long-term consequence\u201d unfolding beneath them.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s easy to show amputations or bandages,\u201d she says. \u201cBut this is the silent suffering. It\u2019s everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n In Gaza, she says, even the basic assumption of safety no longer exists.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can\u2019t say to anyone that they are safe, because you don\u2019t know,\u201d she says. \u201cEven with a so-called ceasefire, people are still being killed. You never know when it\u2019s your turn.\u201d<\/p>\n For Brubakk, recovery from trauma-related mutism is slow and fragile.<\/p>\n She recalls a five-year-old boy, Adam, who developed selective mutism after witnessing his father\u2019s death in an Israeli air strike. He stopped speaking to anyone except his mother, communicating only in faint whispers, and withdrew almost entirely.<\/p>\n At first, he refused all interaction. But gradually, small signs of recovery appeared.<\/p>\n \u201cOne day he whispered to his mother, \u2018Get rid of that woman, I don\u2019t like her,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I was actually happy, because it meant he was reacting again.\u201d<\/p>\n From there, recovery came in fragments \u2013 brief eye contact, moments of curiosity, small steps back towards engagement before he slowly found his voice again.<\/p>\n Brubakk says this kind of progress depends on structured, consistent care that is increasingly difficult to provide. At Hamad Hospital, al-Khorti says children with conditions such as selective mutism require specialised tools and long-term rehabilitation.<\/p>\n \u201cThese conditions require specialised therapeutic intervention and rehabilitation tools,\u201d he told Al Jazeera. \u201cMany have been damaged or lost during the war.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite this, Brubakk says recovery can still begin in the simplest of ways.<\/p>\n One of her tools is what she calls \u201chope bubbles\u201d \u2013 soap bubbles used in therapy with withdrawn children.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re so beautiful, and so peaceful just falling slowly,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd it helps children shift attention from fear.\u201d<\/p>\n Blowing them also becomes a way of regulating breath and calming the nervous system.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you want big bubbles, you need to breathe slowly,\u201d she explains. \u201cIt becomes a way of calming the body through play.\u201d<\/p>\n She says this shift, from fear to curiosity, can help children begin to engage and relax again.<\/p>\n \u201cIt helps them relax, sleep better, regulate their nervous system,\u201d she says. \u201cIt puts them back onto a developmental track.\u201d<\/p>\n She recalls Adam again, her eyes distant. Recovery, she explains, doesn\u2019t come through one breakthrough, but through many small, almost imperceptible returns.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to be patient,\u201d she says. \u201cEvery small step matters.\u201d<\/p>\n In Gaza, she says, even the smallest moments of safety carry enormous weight precisely because they are so rare.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n After an intense bombardment struck near his home, five-year-old Jad Zohud suddenly lost his ability to speak. He is not alone. Across Gaza, specialists are reporting a rising number of children who can no longer speak following war-related injuries or psychological trauma. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list For some, the cause is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20219,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
How is the problem manifesting?<\/h2>\n
Why is this happening?<\/h2>\n
Is Gaza different from other conflict zones?<\/h2>\n
How do children begin to recover?<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"