Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 1994, Vol. 25, No. 3,259-267 Copyright 1994 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0735-7028/94/S3.00 Uses and Abuses of Mental Health Professionals on Israeli Radio During the Persian Gulf War Eliezer Witztum and Akiba A. Cohen Israel's situation during the Persian Gulf War, which caused shock and put the country in a state of emergency, is described in this article. Radio was the dominant medium of communication. Even as the fighting was going on, many complaints were lodged against mental health professionals, mostly psychologists, who began to appear on the radio in an attempt to help the population cope with the situation. In this article, reality (the frequency of the appearance of experts, their specialties, and the contents of their messages) is contrasted with the fantastic claims made against the professionals. It is suggested that most of the claims were invalid and that the appearances of the professionals were adequate in both quantity and quality. A hypothesis is offered to explain the gap between the claims and the findings. In this article, we describe a seeming paradox related to the appearance of mental health professionals on Israeli radio broadcasts during the Persian Gulf War: On the one hand, the public expressed much satisfaction with the overall perfor- mance of the radio and suggested that it was the most important medium of mass communication; on the other hand, there was much criticism expressed by psychologists and journalists, even while the war was going on, concerning both the frequency of the appearances of mental health professionals on the radio and about what they actually said on the air. We examine these ap- pearances at the empirical level and offer a hypothesis in an attempt to resolve the paradox. ELIEZER WITZTUM graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusa- lem Medical School in 1974. He is currently senior psychiatrist at the North Jerusalem Community Mental Health Center. He has established a Religious and Cultural Consultation Unit providing assessment and culture-sensitive therapy. He also lectures on Medical Psychology at the Hebrew University. AKIBA A. COHEN received his doctorate in Communication from Mich- igan State University in 1973. He is the Danny Arnold Professor of Communication in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the Hebrew University. His main interest is the comparative study of television news. THIS STUDY WAS SUPPORTED by grants from the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and the Smart Family Foundation Communication Institute at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. An earlier version of this article was presented in May 1992 at the Annual Conference of the Interna- tional Communication Association, Miami, Florida. WE THANK Avinoam Brog, Executive Director of the Van Leer Jerusa- lem Institute, for initiating the idea for the study and for securing much of the funding. We also thank Uri Paz, Director of News and Current Affairs at the Israel Defense Forces Radio, and Tami Raviv-Lefler and Carmit Heffer, two graduate students at the Hebrew University who gathered and analyzed the empirical data. Benjamin Beit-Hallachmi, Yoram Bilu, Danny Brom, Esther Cohen, Reuven Gal, and Zahava Sol- omon provided comments at various stages of the project. CORRESPONDENCE CONCERNING THIS ARTICLE should be sent to Eliezer Witztum, Department of Psychology, Hebrew University of Je- rusalem, Mount Scopus Campus, 91905, Jerusalem, Israel. The Persian Gulf War began in the early morning hours, Isra- eli time, on January 17, 1991 and lasted 42 days. After the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in the summer of 1990 and until the attack by the coalition forces, Israelis had been preparing themselves for possible involvement in another Mideast war. From their point of view, the Persian Gulf War had two characteristics that made it different from previous wars. First, although the Iraqi threat toward Israel, including its missile-launching capability, was well known, it was nonetheless uncertain whether the Iraqis could actually launch chemical or biological warheads. Second, and most important, Israelis, so it appeared, were unlikely to become involved in the fighting. During the first few days of the war, an advance warning of about 90 s was given after a missile launch, but with the im- provement of the telemetry system and the United States' deci- sion to provide Israel with virtual real-time information, the advance warning time from firing to landing was increased to approximately 5 full min. This enabled people to enter their sealed rooms' in a less precipitous manner. This was the first time in many years that war damage and casualties actually occurred in the main population centers of Israel. Thus, as one might expect, the Israeli people found them- selves in a state of realistic anxiety. Although there was no fight- ing in the streets of Israeli towns and villages nor along its bor- ders, it was war, and numerous Scud missiles did fall on popu- lated areas. Of the 773 reported casualties admitted to hospitals immediately after the missile attacks, 8 were deaths, but only 2 were directly attributed to the Scuds. Six more people died of related causes—heart attacks, unjustified self-injections of at- ropine (provided with gas masks for use only during a chemical attack), and suffocation because of improper use of the masks. Of all those treated, 328 (43%) suffered from stress reactions, and there were 208 (27%) cases of unjustified atropine injec- tions (Bleich, Dycian, Koslowsky, Solomon, & Wiener, 1992). These numbers do not include people who experienced delayed ' This was the term used for a room in each home used as a shelter against chemical warheads on the Scud missiles. This option was chosen instead of the conventional type of air-raid shelter. 259 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.