Miriam Miedzinski-Ballin, trailblazer who made mental health part of first aid, dies at 38

Miriam Miedzinski-Ballin, a US-born immigrant who pioneered the practice of providing psychological first aid at mass trauma scenes, including terror attacks and other emergencies, died Thursday. She was 38.

The death was announced by United Hatzalah of Israel head Eli Beer, who worked closely with Miedzinski-Ballin as she founded United Hatzalah’s Psychotrauma and Crisis Response Unit over a decade ago.

No cause of the death was given for Miedzinski-Ballin, a mother of five children ranging in age from 9 to 16.

A clinical psychologist originally from Houston, Texas, Miedzinski-Ballin moved to Israel in 2012, and soon after approached Beer about starting the psychotrauma unit. The idea was to give mental health support, or what is known as psychological first aid, during emergencies such as car accidents and terror attacks as they are happening, according to Beer.

“Miriam had immense merit,” wrote Beer. “As a medic, she saw too many people left traumatized, untreated, or discharged from hospitals only to continue suffering.”

Beer said that he “loved her idea, and together we created United Hatzalah’s Psychotrauma Unit which has grown to include hundreds of volunteers, including a therapy dog unit, and soon, a Resilience Center in Jerusalem.”

According to a 2019 United Hatzalah post on social media, Miedzinski-Ballin’s team developed a protocol that “combined Israel’s expertise in trauma intervention with the protocols of the World Health Organization, making it “the first fully integrated psychotrauma team in the world.”

“The most heartbreaking part is that the very psychotrauma team Miriam built was needed by her own children the moment they learned she was gone,” Beer wrote. “From that second, they needed the same support she had worked so hard to create, and the team she founded was there for them.”

Miedzinski-Ballin was the first Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, female EMT and ambulance driver in Jerusalem, and the first woman to receive the United Hatzalah Outstanding Medic Award two years in a row, in 2018 and 2019.

In 2019, she was also awarded the Bonei Zion Prize awarded by Nefesh B’Nefesh for outstanding immigrants from English-speaking countries.

Miedzinski-Ballin studied marriage and family therapy at Bar Ilan University and behavioral psychology at Thomas Edison State University in New Jersey.

She wrote in The Times of Israel in 2021 of some of the challenges she and her children faced when she left the Haredi world and joined her girlfriend in Tel Aviv.

In addition to her work at United Hatzalah, Miedzinski-Ballin treated clients privately at her clinic in Tel Aviv to help them cope with the traumas of October 7 and the ongoing Hamas war.

In an interview with CNN on October 9, 2023, Miedzinski-Ballin shared some of the horrors she had seen working as part of a United Hatzalah emergency team on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded Israel, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping 251 people into Gaza.

“One woman played dead for five hours in the field with a wounded arm,” Miedzinski-Ballin recounted.

She said that as a mother, she was trying “to be honest” with her children about what happened.

“My job is to put a smile on my face and be able to tell them everything’s going to be okay,” she said. “But at the same time, I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

In 2018, Miedzinski-Ballin flew to Pittsburgh with a United Hatzalah mental health team immediately after the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue, in which a gunman attacked worshipers attending Saturday morning services, killing 11 people and traumatizing a community.

In a video she filmed near the synagogue, she said, “Everyone just wants to be together. To cry together. To stand together.”

A funeral for Miedzinski-Ballin was held Saturday.

“Miriam was a powerhouse of a human being,” said Raphael Poch, a former spokesperson for United Hatzalah and one of her friends. “From opening and running Jewish education programs in Australia, to spearheading relief and humanitarian missions following natural disasters in Houston, Florida, and Pittsburgh, to opening an equipment center and welcoming soldiers in her own home at the beginning of the Iron Swords war, Miriam made an impact on everyone she met. You couldn’t have a conversation with her and not be inspired to do something better for the world. That is the effect she had in people.”