Lack of justice, complicated mourning and development of ptsd in orphans of armed conflicts: the case of children in north west region

Abstract

Our Study entitled: “Lack of justice, complicated mourning and development of PTSD in orphans of armed conflicts: The case of children in Northwest region”. Experiencing the loss of a parent (s) especially in the situation of injustice lead to significant psychological suffering on the individual. When victims are aware of their perpetuators this triggers the quest for justice to be done. She finds herself plunged into a state of crisis where the pain of the loss and seeking justice for the loss are closely connected. Throughout the mourning period, this desire of injustice keeps interfering, limiting the individual‟s ability to mourn thereby leading to the development of posttraumatic stress disorder. This is why it is important to question the development of PTSD in orphans of armed conflicts. In this study, we question the contribution of lack of justice in the development of PTSD in orphans of armed conflict. The research question of this study is: How does lack of justice lead to the development of PTSD in orphans of armed conflict? As an answer, we formulated the hypothesis as: The lack of justice contributed to the development of PTSD in orphans of armed conflicts through complicated mourning. Thus, our objective is to understand the place of complicated mourning in the development of posttraumatic stress disorder in orphans of armed conflict in Northwest Region. To do this, we used the clinical method. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with four orphans of armed conflict with PTSD. These data were subject to a thematic content analysis. We equally used “The children‟s impact of event scale (13) cries-13” to confirm if our participant were suffering from PTSD. The result obtained from this study shows that the lack of justice through complicated mourning contributed to the development of PTSD in the participants of this study. The perceived injustice related to their parent's death results in anger, grief, and social withdrawal, impacting their emotional well-being and trust in authority figures. These orphans‟ exhibit complicated grief, characterized by emotional struggles, problematic behaviours, and some defence mechanisms like repression, spitting and denial. And as a result of these complications these participants have developed PTSD following their results of “The children‟s impact of event scale (13) cries-13”, which stipulate that, if a child score 17 and above when combine the score of Intrusion and Avoidance that means the child is suffering from PTSD. Using this scale, it was found that the combined score (Intrusion + Avoidance) these participants were scoring above 17 as seen in the case of; Lili scoring 46; Vicky 32; Emma 30 and Bright 38, giving us a higher degree of PTSD in these orphans. These results thus give clinical relevance to our initial hypothesis.