ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Public Mental Health
Political Grief and Ambiguous Loss in a Threatened Democracy: Psychological Distress and Civic Responses during Israel's Judicial Reform
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Behavioral Sciences, Academic College Tel Aviv-Yaffo, Tel Aviv, Israel
- 2Bar-Ilan University Department of Psychology, Ramat Gan, Israel
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background: Political transitions can have profound mental health effects, yet political grief remains underexplored. Drawing on ambiguous loss and grief theory, this study examined how perceived democratic backsliding during Israel's 2023 judicial reform affected psychological distress and civic engagement. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 453 Israeli adults opposing the reform. Measures included political ambiguous loss (PAL), political grief (adapted PG-13 scale), psychological distress (DASS-21), political efficacy, and protest participation. Results: 64.9% of participants exceeded the PG-13 threshold, indicating elevated political grief. Moderate to severe depression, stress, and anxiety were reported by 32.0%, 26.3%, and 10.8% of participants, respectively. Political grief fully mediated the relationship between PAL and distress, accounting for 41% of the variance in depression, 30% in anxiety, and 36% in stress, controlling for socio-demographic variables. Logistic regression showed that higher stress, political efficacy, and PAL predicted protest participation, while higher anxiety predicted non-participation. Conclusion: Findings highlight the psychological toll of democratic backsliding and identify political grief as a distinct emotional response linking political ambiguous loss to public mental health. Collective grief functions both as a psychological burden and as a mobilizing force. Recognizing such grief at the national level and implementing community-based mental health interventions are crucial to supporting populations during political crises.
Keywords: ambiguous loss, political grief, Political self-efficacy, political engagement, protest
Received: 18 Aug 2025; Accepted: 03 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yehene and Ohayon. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Einat Yehene
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.