World

Balkans: A Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (ptsd) Study

by peter.reardon | March 21, 2009 at 04:02 pm

471 views | 14 Recommendations | 7 comments

peter.reardon on the ‘scars of war’:-

This study is but one outcome of the Bosnian war, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, (ptsd), it was welcome news personally that this emotional disorder is being recognised in one region, but sadly not all, of the former Jugoslavia.

I spent 12 months, until 1995, working in remote areas in Bosnia and can’t begin to comprehend the enormous need for individual treatment, or the financial cost to the government health service.

My work with aid agencies was in support of the vulnerable civilian population: women, children and the elderly, who were suffering their own traumas for which I hope, treatment for their stress has been provided.

This story in the Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS) was written by Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade, in the Republic of Serbia, and is the first

“…on health among war veterans in Serbia…”

Zimonjic explains who the target groups were:

“The two-year study among 2,399 soldiers in 40 municipalities shows that 84 percent of war veterans have chronic health problems, most frequently coronary and blood vessels diseases, and 54.1 percent have mental health issues.”

The IPS report rightly supports the study in which Zimonjic informs us about the limitations in the region as a whole. For example

“In Bosnia, an association of Muslim war veterans from the town Tuzla recently announced that 518 of its members had committed suicide since 1995, and that about another 300 had attempted it…In Sarajevo … one in five of 55,000 demobilised fighters suffer from PTSD but were unable "to find adequate help and understanding in society for their problems."”

A different population from the veterans mentioned above are referenced only as:

“Some 200,000 people were forced into one or the other form of detention camps, and they have many problems they're trying to overcome either on their own or with little expert help.”

Survivors of detention camps range in age from young children, women, and the elderly from all regions in conflict: most of whom the ‘scars of war’ will remain in the families for generations to come.

Not included in this study were those who as children were forced to walk ahead of soldiers across fields that were thought to be mined: these survivors too are also in need of treatment.

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sara star

at 18:50 on March 21st, 2009

I can't imagine what it would have been like to work there. Thank you for sharing this original piece.

The Bosnian civil war was the most brutal chapter in the breakup of Yugoslavia. On February 29, 1992, the multiethnic republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbs, and Muslim Slavs lived side by side, passed a referendum for independence -- but not all Bosnian Serbs agreed.

Bosnian Serb guerrillas carried out deadly campaigns of "ethnic cleansing," massacring members of other ethnic groups or expelling them from their homes to create exclusively Serb areas. Attacks on civilians and international relief workers disrupted supplies of food and other necessities just when such aid was most crucial: in what became the worst refugee crisis in Europe since World War II, millions of Bosnians (and Croatians) had been driven from their homes by July 1992

On December 14, 1995, the leaders of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia signed the Dayton peace accords, officially ending the wars in Bosnia and Croatia after about 250,000 people had died and more than 3 million others became refugees.

The death of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević in The Hague, where he was being tried for war crimes at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, caused a stir and was a major political event, especially for Serbia. Milošević died only months before the verdict was due in his four-year trial.

peter.reardon

at 19:45 on March 21st, 2009

Thank your for comment. However, the reference you provided, was, in part, a little idealistic.

Many people with whom I visited in towns and remote villages had a common recollection of life during the fascist occupation of World War 2 with the clergy reporting 'non-Christians' anti-fascists to the military, as an example.

The story's were long and memories seemed very sharp about historic events... the people have other stories now.

Peter

gerrypopplestone

at 19:29 on March 21st, 2009

Thank you for sharing a really interesting piece of work. Working with people with PTSD, helping them to tackle the stresses, is such an important task. Sadly it is widely ignored or even denied by policy makers. Especial thanks to you, given the difficulty you might experience with PD, and good wishes for tacking it in the future.

peter.reardon

at 07:30 on March 22nd, 2009

gerrypopplestone:- Glad you found the piece of interest, thanks for reading.

I'm no longer working. At the end of my stay in Bosnia I was diagnosed with ptsd and it was three or four years later that I came down with Parkinson's Disease.

Now I spend my time extricating my fingers from between the keys of the keyboard when writing my stories.

Peter.

yuls.source

at 11:23 on March 22nd, 2009

Thanks for posting. I am glad such studies are at least being conducted. I only wish more was in done in the way of actually helping the victims. The Yugoslavian conflict does not get much media exposure any more unless it comes to war crimes trials, so we do not get to know much about the victims themselves and how they are coping.

peter.reardon

at 12:19 on March 22nd, 2009

Your comment hits the nail on the head regarding the "crass' objectives of most media: "what can we sensationalize to turn a profit".

Repairing buildings is easy; repairing an individual, or a nations soul is another story.

Thanks for your thoughtful words.

Peter

peter.reardon

at 16:59 on June 12th, 2009

Waiver:

Based on my experience of religious groups in third world environments in Canada, Europe,Asia and Africa I do not support the work of religious groups who prey on suffering people, survivors of war, rape, mental suffering of boy soldiers,and so on, in order to increase the scope of their particular religion.

However I do respect a persons right to add the video of this form of exploitation to my story.