Ten years after the genocide: Trauma confrontation and posttraumatic stress in Rwandan adolescents

✍ Scribed by Susanne Schaal; Thomas Elbert

• Book ID: 102448516
• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 132 KB
• Volume: 19
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0894-9867
• DOI: 10.1002/jts.20104

✦ Synopsis

A decade after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, we interviewed a total of 68 Rwandan orphans about their war experiences and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. The two samples comprised youth living either in a child-headed household (CHH) or in an orphanage. All had been exposed to extreme levels of violence and 41% had witnessed the murder of their own mother or father. Of the sample, 44% had PTSD. PTSD vulnerability was greater for youth who at the time of the study lived in CHH than those in an orphanage; it was also higher in those aged 8 to 13 during the outbreak of the genocide than those aged 3 to 7 at the time. Furthermore, a significant relationship was found between the number of traumatic experiences and subsequent stress responses.