As there are very few practical tools available to address the need of small children aged 0-6 years of age following war and disasters, the Foundation thinks it is important to develop such a manual. There is much research to base good, practical advise to parents on following disasters, but it needs to be worked into a practical tool or handbook that parents other child caretakers can use to support children following large scale natural or man-made disasters.

The Children and War Foundation has previously supported the development of several manuals. By gathering world experts in a certain professional field and having them work together for a week to produce a concrete product (manual), we have been very successful in creating very practical manuals to help children and adolescents following war and disasters.

William Yule and Patrick Smith will teach participants from mental health and educational professionals on how to run groups for young people who have been affected by exposure to the traumas of war and disasters.

The workshop is based on the Foundation’s manual which has been widely used after earthquakes in Iran, Greece and China to mention some places.

The Teaching Recovery Techniques workshop will be held in London October 21 and 22.

For the programme and details on how to book a place to the open training, please download the attached pdf. Please be aware that places are limited.

Photo by Lars Svenkerud.

Being orphaned by a war during childhood or adolescence is associated with a high likelihood of depression, anxiety disorders and other psychological distress in young adulthood, results from the Kosovo study indicates.

The Children and War Foundation funded a project that investigated mental health of 179 bereaved young adults and 175 non-bereaved young adults who experienced the Kosovo war a decade ago as children or adolescents. All bereaved participants reported the killing of the father during the war.

Dr. Nexhmedin Morina from the University of Amsterdam and Dr. Ulrike von Lersner from the Free University of Berlin has now completed the project, and has summarised the study.

Results indicated that about 60 per cent of the orphaned young war survivors met criteria for either major depressive disorder or an anxiety disorder, as compared to 40 per cent of non-bereaved young war survivors.

Among orphaned war survivors, participants with clinical symptoms of prolonged grief were three times more likely to suffer from either depression or an anxiety disorder and nearly eight times more likely to report current suicide risk.

Furthermore, bereaved participants with clinical symptoms of prolonged grief reported significantly more somatic symptoms, higher general health distress, and higher scores of negative affect as compared to bereaved participants without such symptoms. These findings indicate that being orphaned by the war during childhood or adolescence is associated with a high likelihood of depression, anxiety disorders, and other psychological distress in young adulthood.

The Child Psychosocial Distress Screener (CPDS) is a primary screener for children between 8 and 14 years old. It can be downloaded free of charge.

Raija-Leena Punamäki, Samir R. Quota and Esa J. Palosaari have also undertaken a follow-up study to check the effectiveness of the Teaching Recovery Techniques manual. More details will be published once the final paper has been published.

The authors represent the University of Helsinki, the Islamic University, Gaza, Palestine and the University of Tampere respectively.

Kennedy Amone-P’Olak and Eugenie Mukanoheli held a workshop in the Teaching Recovery Techniques in April in the city of Gulu, the epicentre of the war in Northern Uganda.

28 participants from across Uganda attended the workshop held from 20 to 24 April. Participants included psychiatrists, psychologists, counsellors, clinical psychiatric officers and nurses from universities, counseling schools, and hospitals.

“The workshop also included going to IDP camps where we got live examples of people with intrusive thoughts, avoidance behaviours, hyper arousal, mass hysteria, hallucinations, and people reportedly seeing ghosts of people killed during the war,” said facilitator Kennedy Amone-P’Olak.

The manual has been used in a training for social workers in Nairobi, where they were trained in the recovery techniques.

The training started 8 April and ran for three weeks, eight sessions in total, including one for implementation.

Mr Lorentzen who has been an active member of our Board of Overseers, died when his heart stopped during a run in Bergen Wednesday.

The 62 year-old musician, was known to many Norwegians as a member of the Norwegian duo Knutsen & Ludvigsen, but he invested a lot of his time and energy to help children. He was a UNICEF ambassador, but he also collaborated with Magne Raundalen and Marianne Straume at the Center for Crisis Psychology in Bergen to help traumatised refugee children.

“He was a great man, an eminent musician, composer and author, but most of all he was a true child’s advocate,” says Atle Dyregrov.

The Chinese CRIES 13-version seemed “to be a useful self-rating diagnostic tool for survivors with PTSD symptoms”, the study concludes.

Several researchers at the Mental Health Center at Sichuan University has undertaken the study which explored the reliability and validity of CRIES-13. A total of 253 children who experienced the Wenchuan earthwquake participated in the study.

The study showed a consistency, and that there wasn’t a significant difference between the screening of CRIES-13 score and the clinical diagnosis.

Read more about the study: Zhao GF, Zhang Q, Pang Y, Ren ZJ, Peng D, Jiang GG, Liu SM, Chen Y, Geng T, Zhang SS, Yang YC, Deng H. Application of the Children’s Impact of Event Scale (Chinese Version) on a rapid assessment of posttraumatic stress disorder among children from the Wenchuan earthquake areaReli. Zhonghua Liu Xing Bing Xue Za Zhi 2009 Nov; 30(11): 1160-4.