by Hani Hamdan
Introduction:
Wars are one of the worst things about humans; the amount of agony and suffering that wars cause is unimaginable, and the most affected by them are children, with no power to defend themselves and the awareness to comprehend the tragedies to deal with them, which makes children absorb all of it and endlessly suffer because of it. This leads us to investigate the effects of war on children and the way it changes them forever.
The various aspects of war on children’s psychology:
The relationship between war and children is very complicated, and war can impact children psychologically and physiologically in multiple ways, so for this purpose, we will discuss how war affects children in three sections:
– First, we will look at the war’s impact from a broader perspective through a systematic review that explored 35 studies analyzing the psychological impacts of political violence on children aged 0-6, so let’s see the impacts from the most prevalent among these studies to the least:
1- Behavioral/emotional issues: Embedded in internalizing/ externalizing issues (examples include anxiety, new fears, clinginess, aggression, sadness, prevalence in 13 studies in different forms)
2- PTSD: It is the most prevalent across 13 studies, and scored the highest rates in chronic conflicts.
3- Sleep problems: Included nightmares and refusal to sleep alone (5 studies)
4- Distorted play: This comes due to increased aggression/inhibition, and less fantasy (4s studies).
5-Psychosomatic symptoms: Revealed in stomachache and bowel issues (a few studies).
– Moving to the pubertal development aspect, we have a study that followed 1,576 Syrian refugee children living in settlements in Lebanon and examined how war-related trauma and energetic stress (nutritional deprivation) can influence the development of these children, both boys and girls.
In boys, the study did not find that energetic stress alone can delay puberty, and in terms of war exposure, boys suffered from accelerated pubertal timing. In girls, the higher energetic stress reduced the likelihood of menarche (first menstruation), and war exposure did not generally increase the risk of menarche, contradicting predictions.
– In the last sections, we have a study that tried to see the consequences of war on the adult children of war veterans, and the study examined this by comparing two groups of children: one group of children of deployed veterans and the other group of children of non-deployed Vietnam-era personnel. The results of the study found that the first group had higher mental health risks, shown in increased diagnoses of anxiety and depression, a tendency to suicidal ideation and planning, and poorer current mental health scores overall. These effects persisted decades after the war, suggesting enduring psychological consequences.
Approaches for support:
After we understand the different ways in which war impacts children, let’s explore the most effective intervention methods. For this matter, we have a systematic review of mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) interventions for children affected by armed conflict. In the study, there are four main levels of interventions:
1- Individual-level interventions: In this level, interventions are delivered in two ways. The first is psychological first aid, which is structured around core actions like (safety, calming, practical support, connecting to services), and this method is shown to be effective in the short-term by giving the children a sense of being safer, calmer, more hopeful, and lessening the symptoms of PTSD. The second is Narrative exposure therapy, which works by creating a lifeline narrative containing both the good and the traumatic experiences, then working through them chronologically. In terms of effectiveness, this method appears to be helpful in severe cases and significantly reduces PTSD symptoms and aggression.
2- Family-level interventions: The level includes many intervention methods, but most of them focus on teaching the parents about mental health, through improving parenting skills, learning about children’s emotions and how they should deal with them, and building a strong parent-child relationship. Overall, these methods seem to make children feel safer in the family and improve the relationships inside the family.
3- School-based interventions: It’s the most effective among the other, with a focus on training teachers, enhancing schools’ teaching programs, and group intervention inside the classrooms, and they show a big reduction in the symptoms of PTSD and other positive effects depending on the method.
4- Community-level interventions: Most of the methods in this level were group interventions, such as a dialogue group, local groups, and solidarity groups, and they were effective in improving social support, psychological well-being, and better socioemotional development and resilience.
Conclusion:
In this research, we explored the devastating effects of war on children in different ways (mental, developmental, and intergenerational), and the supportive approaches at multiple levels, showing the effectiveness of every method.
Resources:
Slone, M., & Mann, S. (2016). Effects of war, terrorism, and armed conflict on young children: A systematic review. *Child Psychiatry & Human Development*, 47(3), 436-461. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-016-0626-7
Black, C. J., McEwen, F. S., Smeeth, D., Popham, C. M., Karam, E., & Pluess, M. (2023). Effects of war exposure on pubertal development in refugee children. *Developmental Psychology*, 59(9), 1559–1572. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001569
Forrest, W., Edwards, B., & Daraganova, G. (2018). The intergenerational consequences of war: anxiety, depression, suicidality, and mental health among the children of war veterans. *International Journal of Epidemiology*, 47(4), 1060–1067. https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyy040
Arega, N. T. (2023). Mental health and psychosocial support interventions for children affected by armed conflict in low- and middle-income countries: A systematic review. *Child & Youth Care Forum*, 52(3), 597–619. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10566-023-09741-0