Former child soldiers suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the ailment once known among World War I troops as ”shell shock”, according to a study published on Saturday.
Several hundred youngsters who had been abducted by the notoriously brutal Ugandan rebel group the Lord’s Resistance’s Army were interviewed for the study, one of the few pieces of research to analyse scientifically the experiences and mental health of child soldiers.
Seventy-seven percent of the interviewees had seen someone being killed; 39% had to kill someone themselves. Six percent had seen their own father, mother, brother or sister being killed. Two percent had had to kill their own father, brother or another relative.
More than a third of the girls had been sexually abused and nearly one in five of them had given birth to one or more children in captivity.
Of the 301 interviewees, 71 were selected at random and asked to take part in a survey to assess their psychiatric state.
A scorecard of their responses showed a massive 97% suffered from PTSD, regardless of the time they had spent as child soldiers or the time that had elapsed since they were involved in the conflict.
PTSD is now a recognised state of mental health for soldiers and civilians who have seen or suffered extreme acts of violence.
Its symptoms are nightmares, flashbacks and sleeplessness. The condition is also linked with drug and alcohol abuse, memory problems, family discord and an inability to function in social life.
The study, led by Ilse Derluyn, a specialist in child health at Belgium’s Ghent University, is published on Saturday in the British medical weekly The Lancet.
According to United Nations estimates, about 300 000 children worldwide, many of them in African civil wars, are forced into soldiering, experiencing traumas that become a huge social problem for that country after the conflict ends.
An estimated 20 000 children have been abducted in the 16-year-old conflict in northern Uganda.
The interviewees were former child soldiers who responded to a request in Gulu and Lira town. Their average age at the time of abduction was 12,9 years. — Sapa-AFP