Women, war and trauma: a study description.

The last few decades have seen a sharp increase in research into the psychological, psychiatric and social consequences of war. However the bulk of this research relates to male veterans and refugees. There is a serious dearth of literature on female civilians, particularly where the research is being performed in the country of trauma origin. This study aims to explore the psychosocial effects of war on women. One hundred and fifty female civilians participated in this study, conducted in the city of Sarajevo and surrounding refugee settlements in Bosnia. The subjects were divided into three groups: domestic women residing in Sarajevo during and after the war, displaced: women forced to leave their homes, and staying in refugee settlements, returness: women who have returned to Sarajevo from exile. Each woman was interviewed extensively by local psychiatrists. This interview contained the Harvard Trauma Scale for the screening of PTSD and Social Functioning, and the Hopkins Checklist for Anxiety and Depression. Both these tests have been revised, translated and validated for the Bosnian population. The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and the Lazarus Coping scale examine psychological aspects of self-esteem and coping. A questionnaire containing demographic information was devised for the purposes of this study.

[Psychosocial research during the war in Sarajevo]. / Psihosocijalna istrazivanja u toku rata u Sarajevu.

War in Bosnia and Herzegovina has caused many psychic and social breakdowns. The consequences on mental health of the war which caused stress are of importance, as well as influences on psychic functioning of individuals are caused by changes in social structure of population and economic potential of the society. Project "Psycho-social aspects of war in BiH" carried out within the frame of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Department of Psychiatry of Clinical Center of Sarajevo University. In this article are given the results of the Project, but only partially. The investigations showed that the number of patients visiting hospitals during the war was greatly increased in the field of stress reactions and reactive psychoses. But incidence and prevalence of alcohol psychoses decreased. Findings are the same for out patient clinics. The field investigation on the free territories of Sarajevo s communities shows enormous increase of mental disorders among the citizens: neurotic over 40%, psychotic about 20% and that is, together, more than 60% of the population of the town Sarajevo were disturbed at that time. Among the children and adolescents there was an increase of neurotic and psychotic disorders in the very beginning of the first year of the war, and decrease of the same diagnoses during the second year. This might be explained by particular adaptation of the youngsters to war conditions. When we are talking about invalidity of neurological and psychiatric disorders, the investigations showed that illness is the mostly caused by invalidity (85.1%) among the global invalidity during the war in Sarajevo. Injuries before the war were at 3%, during the war are 11% of cases. But, all those shows temporary, because war caused invalidity more and we are expecting to registration later. Our investigation among the refugee camps and population in Sarajevo shows that "life equipment" among the displaced persons was lower than domestic people. That shows that after the phase of surviving this part of the population was at risk of many psycho-social problems. Also, our investigation shows that very low socio-economical level of inhabitants of Sarajevo leads to the potential of absolutely poverty. The indicators of this trend are: low level of education, very low life standard, unemployment, bad health conditions etc. Among refugees all those indicators are worse. Criminality in Sarajevo during the war has been increased, particularly among adolescents. One fifth of contents of daily newspaper "Oslobodenje" has been during the war oriented to the health system problems.