In Gaza’s overcrowded shelters, where sorrow clings to the thin fabric of tents and the noise echoes with the weight of unbearable memories, a fragile yet vital hope flickers. Psychological support initiatives are tending to wounds unseen by cameras—healing pains no medicine can reach.

"I thought I had lost my son twice—once when our home was bombed, and again when he stopped speaking," said Umm Mohammed, clinging tightly to her boy inside a cold, crumbling shelter. Her exhausted eyes speak of a grief too deep for words. Yet hope returned when her daughter, long silent, picked up a handful of coloured pencils and began to draw.

Across Gaza, the trauma borne by children and women has become a silent epidemic. Umm Ibrahim, who lost her husband and home, shared: "Before the sessions, sorrow consumed me. But through these activities, we found a space to express our pain. My daughter began to live again, speaking through art when words failed her."

In the rubble of Gaza, psychological support is as vital as food or water. Art therapy, group discussions, and games bring brief moments of light amid relentless darkness. "These drawings are cries for safety, expressions of fear too heavy for speech," said Samar Khalil, a psychologist interviewed by Snd news agency. “Children are weighed down by chronic anxiety. Art becomes their only voice.”

The damage goes beyond the young. Psychologist Asmaa Al-Shami explained that mothers, too, suffer severe depression and exhaustion. “We don't just need bread and water,” one mother told us. “We need to breathe. We need someone to hear us.”

The numbers are staggering. According to the World Health Organization, nearly 20% of Gaza’s population suffers from psychological disorders—twice the global average. Around 120,000 people endure mental illnesses, with another 85,000 living with disabilities, overwhelming an already shattered healthcare system.

With Gaza’s only psychiatric hospital barely functioning and clinics reduced to prescribing medication, mental healthcare is a lifeline slipping away. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health has warned that Gaza is enduring “psychological terrorism” as part of a broader genocidal assault.

In a world obsessed with destruction, a child's drawing has become an act of survival. These psychological initiatives, though underfunded and often overlooked, nurture resilience in a land where even the right to dream feels under siege.

They cannot end the war. But they plant the seeds of endurance—and kindle a stubborn hope that refuses to die.