(NewsNation) — Israel and Hamas have agreed to a temporary cease-fire that will see the release of 50 hostages taken during the militant group’s Oct. 7 attacks.
The Wall Street Journal reported the first group of Israeli hostages are expected to be released to representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross at about 5 p.m. local time on Thursday.
Dr. Jamil Abdur-Rahman, a board-certified obstetrician/gynecologist, told NewsNation that those freed will require a lot of psychological and medical treatment.
“When you’re away from your family, when there’s all of the uncertainty of whether or not you’ll be returned, whether or not you’ll be returned in good shape, whether or not you’re going to live — I think that those are the issues, they’re really going to have to deal with more than anything else,” Abdur-Rahman said on “Morning in America” Wednesday. “I’ve seen a lot of evidence that potentially, medically, they’ve been taking decent care of people for the most part with the limited resources they have, and so I think it’s the psychological effects that they’re really going to have to address that a lot of times people don’t consider.”
Susan Guthrie, an attorney and host of “The Divorce and Beyond” podcast added that it’s not just hostages who have been struggling, but their families as well, especially as they wait to see if their loved ones will be the ones released.
“It’s an ongoing retraumatization for these families and for these people,” Guthrie said. “And then you hear about things like survivor’s guilt. I would imagine those who are released are going to feel some ongoing trauma from that as well.”