Coping with war displacement: Anxiety, stress, and social support among evacuees from Northern and Southern Israel

Abstract War-related displacement poses significant psychological demands on affected civilians, yet research comparing evacuees with distinct trauma profiles within the same conflict remains limited. This cross-sectional study examined anxiety, stress, coping strategies, and perceived social support among 278 Israeli evacuees: 159 from the southern periphery (direct acute traumatic exposure) and 119 from the northern periphery (indirect stress exposure), surveyed approximately two months following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack. Three hypotheses were tested: regional differences in distress and coping (H1), associations between coping strategies and psychological distress (H2), and the moderating role of perceived social support in the coping–distress relationship (H3). Contrary to H1, no significant univariate differences emerged on any individual outcome; however, a significant multivariate effect indicated that the two groups differed in their overall psychological profile, consistent with Conservation of Resources theory and the concept of a shared but distinctly patterned displacement reality. Partially supporting H2, emotion-focused coping was a consistently positive predictor of both anxiety and stress across all groups, while problem-focused coping was unexpectedly associated with higher anxiety among southern evacuees. H3 was partially supported: perceived social support moderated the relationship between problem-focused coping and anxiety specifically among southern evacuees, such that higher support strengthened the anxiety-reducing potential of problem-focused strategies. These findings challenge classical adaptive–maladaptive coping hierarchies under uncontrollable threat and suggest that social support restoration may be a prerequisite for effective intervention in post-trauma displacement contexts. Findings are preliminary and should be interpreted as hypothesis-generating pending longitudinal replication.