Anxiety and depression rose for Jewish parents in California amid a surge of antisemitism after Oct. 7, 2023, according to a new study out of UC Davis.
The research focused on Jewish parents — the vast majority, moms — with children between ages 2 and 18. Of the 218 participants, 193 were mothers.
Leah Hibel, lead author and a professor of human development, told J. on Tuesday that people can experience the same level of stress whether incidents they experience are antisemitic or simply perceived as antisemitic.
(Gregory Urquiaga/UC Davis)
“This is important for our discourse because right now so much of what you read in the newspapers, or opinion takes, are all focused on: ‘But is it antisemitism?’” she said.
That was not her focus. “What my study shows is that whether … somebody believes that what’s going on is antisemitism or not, it is having an antisemitic impact,” she said.
“The impact is an erosion of Jewish mental health.”
Co-authored with Marika Sigal and Yael Teff-Seker, the study found a 30% increase in symptoms of depression and a 45% increase in symptoms of anxiety among participants since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and subsequent rise in antisemitism worldwide.
The study, “Mental Health in Californian Jews Before and After October 7, 2023,” was published in late July in Psychological Trauma, a journal of the American Psychological Association.
“Parents are deeply concerned about antisemitism, and it’s eroding their mental health, both increasing depressive symptoms and anxiety symptoms,” Hibel said.
Hibel has a long history of focusing her research on the effect of stress on families, including how it changes the behavior of parents — particularly mothers. She has studied Mexican American families, working moms and families with marital conflicts.
“My area of expertise is studying the impact of stress on family relationships in early childhood development,” she said. “I’ve studied a number of stressors before, mostly poverty and violence, but also discrimination.”
All of that, Hibel said, had been part of a larger body of collective research among peers in the same field. So she was surprised when she discovered several years ago that there has been almost no new peer-reviewed research about Jewish families over the last 20 years.
“We know way more about Asian families, African American families, Mexican American families, than we do about Jewish families, at least within the psychological literature,” she said. “And so that was, for me, sort of the aha moment of ‘Oh, this is a place where I can really contribute.’”
Hibel had already started to study Jewish families before Oct. 7. After the attack, she had a unique scholarly opportunity to compare the answers from parents before and after that day. Researchers re-interviewed many of the parents interviewed pre-Oct. 7 (68% chose to repeat the survey, the study says) and then interviewed a new group.
“California was selected in part due to the high level of antisemitism recorded,” the study stated.
Depression and anxiety “were significantly higher in participants who completed the survey after Oct. 7 than those who completed the survey before Oct. 7,” according to the study. “Likewise, participants completing the survey after Oct. 7 reported significantly greater concerns about antisemitism than those reporting before.”
Fitting in with Hibel’s interest in how stress on parents affects family life, the study also mentioned that “theoretical and empirical research show that parents’ psychological distress often spills over to impact their ability to provide sensitive and responsive care to their children, potentially jeopardizing child well-being.”
Participants were asked if they’d been made to feel unwelcome because they were Jewish; experienced or witnessed some form of antisemitic event; heard antisemitic comments targeting others or themselves; or experienced a Jewish institution they were affiliated with be targeted, either in real life or online.
The research, which was conducted between September 2023 and August 2024, found that 22.3 percent of participants reported no events, 23.4 percent reported one and 54.4 percent reported two or more.
Hibel emphasized that her focus on the mental health outcomes of antisemitism reflects how social science is conducted.
“When we look at higher Black maternal mortality rates, we understand: ‘Oh, here’s a problem,’” she said. “Black women are dying in childbirth at higher rates than white women. That’s a problem. That’s a huge problem. We don’t say, ‘Oh, but did that doctor really mean to do something racist or not?’ We say, ‘There’s a problem here. Let’s figure out how we can fix that problem.’ That’s a public health approach.”