The Monitor

March 15, 2004

Kakaire A. Kirunda

The research titled "Post-traumatic stress in former Ugandan child soldiers" was conducted by by Ilse Derluyn, Eric Broekaert, Gilberte Schuyten and Els De Temmerman.

The findings are contained in the current edition of the Lancet Medical Journal, which came out on March 12.

A total of 301 former child soldiers in Gulu and Lira participated in this study that sought further scientific research with regard to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among former child fighters of Joseph Kony's LRA.

The findings highlight the nature of severe trauma experienced by this group of children, and show a high rate of post-traumatic stress reactions.

"Almost all the children experienced several traumatic events; 233 (77%) saw someone being killed, and 118 (39%) had to kill someone themselves," the research reads.

According to the study findings, the children gave insight into the nature of the experiences they had during their abduction and had been exposed to six different traumatic events.

"6 % of the children saw their own father, mother, brother, or sister being killed; 7 (2%) killed their own father, brother, or another relative [while] 184 of the children (61%) lived in Sudan under very difficult conditions," the research says.

"49 of them (27%) had to drink their own urine. 193 children (64%) were forced to participate in fights, 21 of them (7%) without any military training," it adds.

Results from the 71 children who agreed to participate in the impact of event scale-revised (IES-R) showed high rates of post-traumatic stress symptoms with 97 percent (69) of them having a clinically significant score.