Studies of the journal Child Development show that both, wartime experience and post-war family and social environment impact the mental health outcome of the children. The first study followed 150 former child soldiers from Sierra Leone for two years after that country’s civil war ended. The results demonstrated that ex-child soldiers had a tendency for depression or aggressive behaviour. Scientists found that the age in which children started fighting was a determinant factor in depression, the younger the more severe depression. For aggressive behaviour, rapes and exposure to severe violence were considered the most influential factors. The second study was about the environments in which former child soldiers were re-introduced and the influence of these on them. For this study, 330 former child soldiers in Uganda were followed. The results showed that two thirds of the group were suffering emotional problems because of the violence witnessed in their new communities. Scientists considered that these emotional problems surged because children related the violence witnessed in their new communities with the one witnessed while they were child soldiers. Researchers found that the remaining third were children without serious lasting mental health issues because they returned to homes and communities in with lower levels of violence and higher levels of emotional support, social acceptance, and socioeconomic stability.
Fred Bemak is a professor of education and human development at George Mason University in Virginia. He’s also a professional counselor, who works closely with the NGO Invisible Children. He is concerned about the issue of child soldiers and because of that he suggests a way to heal them that he has developed with important contributions of the NGO Invisible Children: Recovery tours. He and a psycho-services expert from Invisible Children actually take the children back to the site where they were abducted. “One on each side, we walk them through that site and they talk about every single experience that they had. We ask them what happened here. Where were you lying? Were you facing to the wall? Were you facing to the door when they came in? Where was your grandmother? And they talk us through that whole experience. Then we walk them, side by side, as they’re trembling, as they’re talking about it, walk them through the bush and the pathway that they took,” he said. Bemak says that every child who’s taken to the recovery tour find it extremely healing. And he does believe they can be healed, but it may take a long time. Each child is different. “I think it’s critical that these youth are healed because the long term cost to our society and our community is significant,” he says.
To sum up, a child soldier life after living the nightmare of war experience is very difficult because of the mental issues that emerge as a result of this; but this problem can and must be solved. As Child Development and Professor Fred Bemak have demonstrated, it is possible if former child soldiers are re-introduced into safe communities and if they pass through well-elaborated mental healing processes like Recovery tours.
William Alvarado BI1C
Sources: