Syrian Crisis’ Effects on Children’s mental health

Annotated Bibliography

Hodes, M., Vasquez, M. M., Anagnostopoulos, D., Triantafyllou, K., Abdelhady, D., Weiss,

399. et al. (2018). Refugees in Europe: national overviews from crucial countries with a particular focus on child and adolescent mental health. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 27, 389-399.

According to the authors, the culture in Europe is significantly changing as a result of increased cultural influx from other nations. Especially since the start of the war in Syria, the number of immigrants, particularly refugees, has grown considerably since 2008. Due to the war in Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Somalia, many have sought asylum in Europe. Most of them being underage, consisting of 88300 in 2015 alone. In countries like Germany, Sweden, and Norway, policymakers have adopted tighter immigration to respond to rising immigration. Nonetheless, the international and local requirements, provide that immigrant children, regardless of their ethnicity, should be offered protection from harm. This report reviews the migrant situation in European nations since 2015 with an emphasis on demographics, immigrant children, mental health research, policies, and support for migrants.

The research provides insights on how the crisis in Syria has led to changes in social structure and demographic change in Europe. It also includes information on the effect of the crisis on the citizens and refugees from Syria as the migrant to look for new places to settle. It will include providing the effects the crisis has on other nations apart from Syria.

Swanepoel, M. (2010). The development of the interface between law, medicine, and

psychiatry: medico-legal perspectives in history. Potchefstroom Electronic Law

Journal/Potchefstroomse Elektroniese Regsblad, 12 (4), 124-170.

Swanepoel explains that history is evident that law, medicine, and psychology, just like other branches of medicine, are closely interlinked. Psychiatry is a psychic remedy specialty, but the lack of understanding pathology and psychopathology may have led to ambiguous differentiations between psychic and somatic syndromes, which has mainly has led to symptoms that are not often easy to differentiate from psychic disorders such as agitation and anxiety. The report gives answers to questions like: do we have recommendations from the history of the law on some way to make a change in the future concerning the treatment of mentally ill persons? The article illustrates that “advancement depends on knowledge, knowledge depends on close analysis and evaluation contributes to useful hypotheses, and the rigorous investigation is important.” However, the study delves into how cultures viewed as a strong emphasis on imposing their cultural practices on those they see to have an inferior culture. However, social and economic reality undermine their steps as every culture has a different experience.

The research provides information on how the existing laws have propagated mental illness. By the use of past laws, the research can be used as a platform for establishing laws that will help reduce the prevalence of mental illness in society more so in the Middle-East.

Main Article: Perkins, J. D., Ajeeb, M., Fadel, L., & Saleh, G. (2018). Mental health in

Syrian children with a focus on posttraumatic stress: a cross-sectional study from

Syrian schools. Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology, 53 (11), 1231-1239.

The results of the study indicate that conflict can impact mental wellbeing adversely. Although the Syrian crisis is eight years old, mystery still exists on the impact of the conflict on the general mental health of the population. As a result, the study delves into longitudinal research on the mental health burden of Syrian children in two places in the country. The study also gathered information on socio-demographic and stressful incidents. Binary logistic regression was used to identify variables affecting the progression of symptoms in PTSD.

In the article’s statistical analysis, there least one psychiatric 60.5 percent of those surveyed have at least one possible illness condition with PTSD (35.1%), accompanied by depression (32.0%), and anxiety (29.5%) (Perkins et al., 2018). PTSD symptom was influenced by: live in Damascus, possessing stress and distress, and adverse perceptions, and being girl, and relocation and frequent exposure to the warzone. Therefore, Syrian children witness stressful experiences and constant fighting pressures that have an immense effect on psychological wellbeing.

The research provides first-hand data on the effect of the crisis on the mental health of teenagers and children between ages 8-15. Most of the research, although it is focused on the students. However, it gives a glimpse of the whole population and how they view the effects of war on their lives.

Mental health in Syrian children with a focus on posttraumatic stress: a cross-sectional study from Syrian schools

Mental health illness is a general issue that is affecting people all over the world from the young to the old. Mental health, in itself, is a state of psychological wellbeing. Mental health includes emotional, psychological, and social wellbeing, which in itself affect the way individuals think, feel, and act. With good mental health, people can react to stressful situations and make tough choices with ease, contrary to mental illness. At every stage of life, ones’ mental health matters be it as a child, teenager or an adult because it molds one’s behavior and relationship with those around him/her. Especially for children and teenager, mental health dictates the kind of life they lead as grown-ups, but any effect to the process leads to problems when they grow up. Some of the factors that contribute to mental health problems include biological factors, life experience, family history, and family size. Large families provide insulation for members from advance social problems that may lead to distress.

The study purposes of proving how endless conflict harms the mental health of an individual. With the conflict in Syria being now ten years, there have been great repercussions to the general population, the most obvious being the displacement of many people. A large population is internally displaced, while others migrated to other countries. Some of them in recent weeks have been trying to migrate to Europe amid the global pandemic. However, the large population in Syria is still experiencing the effects of the conflict first hand. Thus the conflict has an influence on the wellbeing of Syrians still in the country. Since few studies have focused on assessing the impact of the war in Syria on those remaining, the study feels the gap by assessing the effect the conflict has on Syrian children. It aims at documenting the effect

Despite the high level of traumatic events in the Middle East, many of the children did not report that they had experienced posttraumatic stress. Out of the 492 students recruited, only 32.1% of them reported that the conflict had hurt them. The study argued that many, if not all, children had experienced a negative effect in one way or another. However, the argument did not hold because children had become accustomed to war in that they did not know how to answer the question. Especially the fact that war has been going on for a better part of their lives, gunfire and explosions conditions have become their way of life.

Additionally, the social structure itself may make discussing such issues with strangers uncomfortable for most children. As observed by the study, many of those who did not answer the question were older children, because teenagers are well conversant with the social structure and beliefs. The trend shows that because the older children were in a position of understanding and answering the question, but opted to ignore it.

Social media has been a source of psychological and mental distress among youths in the west. However, they assumed that in the middle, just because of the conflict that there could not have featured among the results, but the media plays a major role in citizens’ lives in Syria. In recent years, the terrorist group has transformed from staying in the shadow to using social media to bragging about their atrocities. Unlike in the west, where the crisis only features in short segments of news, in Syria, it dominates the airwaves where aftermaths of terrorism, fighting, and those injured and the dead are constantly being shown. In particular, social media platforms like Facebook are used to spread images and videos of executions and suicides. The mental health of the children is affected by a large amount. The fact that these platforms do not regulate the kind of information shown, children may be living with fear, which becomes a long-lasting effect that will influence their adulthood because the availability of such information is widespread.

I have learned from the article that posttraumatic stress, although prevalent in the war-torn area of the world, its symptoms are quite different and factors that cause it due to cultural differences. The social interventions and practices influence the youth’s reaction to war. Because the effects of war are all over the middles east countries, their reaction and tolerance differ very differently from teenagers from the west. Even with the difference in culture, social media seems to have. I have learned that the kind of problems that affect the western world affect youths and teenagers from other areas of the world differently. Thus for any steps, we take towards addressing the effects of PTSD will require understanding the cultural structure and practices in Syria instead of implying experiences from the western culture on them.

Through the activity, I have learned that I need to how to do my research. The research process has become clear; from coming up with issues to address in research to the point of choosing a topic to work on. The library resources available online contain a lot of knowledge that can be utilized in the research work. Therefore, when doing my research, much of the work will go to refining the kind of sources I need that relates to the area of study I am interested in.

References

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Hodes, M., Vasquez, M., Anagnostopoulos, M., Triantafyllou, D., Abdelhady, K., Weiss, D., et al. (2018). Refugees in Europe: National overviews from key countries with a special focus on child and adolescent mental health. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 27 (4), 389-399.

Liddell, B. J., & Jobson, L. (2016). The impact of cultural differences in self-representation on the neural substrates of posttraumatic stress disorder. (464, Ed.) European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 7 (1), 304.

Perkins, J. D., Ajeeb, M., Fadel, L., & Saleh, G. (2018). Mental health in Syrian children with a focus on posttraumatic stress: a cross-sectional study from Syrian schools. Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology, 53 (11), 1231-1239.

Petrenko, O. S. (2018). The network effects of communication in the functioning of mass consciousness in the period of information warfare. Grani, 21 (8), 30-39.

Swanepoel, M. (2010). The development of the interface between law, medicine, and psychiatry: Medico-legal perspectives in history, 12 (4), 123-170.

Terebessy, A., Czeglédi, E., Balla, B. C., Horváth, F., & Balázs, P. (2016). Medical students’ health behavior and self-reported mental health status by their country of origin. BMC psychiatry, , 16 (1), 171-177.

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