Europe

Kosovo

©UNICEF/ HQ97-0179/Roger LeMoyne

We have supported 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 (University of Amsterdam) and Dr. Ulrike von Lersner (Free University, Berlin) concluded the study Psychological distress among children and adolescents orphaned by the war  in 2009. Their findings indicated 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.

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.

The results of the study has been published and can be downloaded here: War and Bereavement: Consequences for Mental and Physical Distress, Nexhmedin Morina, Ulrike von Lersner, Holly G. Prigerson.

Norway

The manual was presented at the European Congress of Psychology in Oslo, July 2009. Training of core trainers in Bergen in November 2009.

UK

In November 2007 the Foundation trained professionals from different locations in London. Two further trainings of respectively core trainers and an open training in November 2009 and October 2010.

Finland

Kirsti Pekkarinen, Raija-Leena Punamäki and Soili Poijula have used the TRT manual with a group of boys who were sexually abused by the same perpetrator. The results show that there was a significant reduction of post traumatic symptoms when measured by the Children’s Impact of Event Scale (CRIES-13).