The Effects on Child Soldiers After a War

     Using children in war has been reported in many countries around the world. Despite international bans, more than 250,000 children fight as soldiers in 86 countries across the globe, almost half of them in Africa (Global Report on Child Soldiers 2001). Children, as young as seven, go through unimaginable violence and horror: killing parents and siblings, assaulting neighbors, and torching the villages they once called home. Some are forced to serve as sex slaves, while many are injected with drugs to suppress their restraints against committing violence. Nobody, especially children should have to go through that. Human brains are not fully developed until the age of twenty five. So, if children are having to commit such serious crimes at the mere ages of seven, what is this doing to their brain chemistry?



 

     Studies have shown that children are vulnerable during their impressionable period, causing permanent scarring of their developing personality when effected by the violence in wars. Researchers have found that all of the child soldiers were exposed to high levels of violence, such as massacres or village raids. More than a third of the girls reported having been raped, and almost a quarter of both girls and boys reported having injured or killed someone. Children who reported surviving rape or reported hurting or killing others showed higher levels of hostility over time compared to those who didn't experience these types of trauma. This suggests that being exposed to these types of war traumas are highly toxic to a child's psychological and social development. Harvard's child health and human rights professor, Theresa Betancourt states, "Witnessing general war violence, although very common, didn't have a strong effect on the children's psychological and social adjustment over time, in contrast, the effects of experiencing rape and wounding or killing others were longer lasting" (Studies Explore Effects 2010).

     Female child soldiers in Uganda, Sierra Leone and Congo were frequently used as sex slaves and they were repetitively raped by the adult fighters (Somasundaram & Jayatunge 2016). Because of this girls are more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder, compared to boys. Some return to their communities having had unwanted pregnancies during the war, and at home, they face guilt and are blamed for being 'impure' regardless of how they were treated in the war (Betancourt 2011).

     Most soldiers, more commonly children, who go to war and come back experience different levels of separation anxiety, depression and/or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). A study that followed 150 former child soldiers from Sierra Leone, found that the age at which children started fighting played a huge role in how depressed they were; the younger, the more severe their depression was. For aggressive behavior, however long and the severity of their war experience was what created more aggressive behavior (Mental Health 2010). Children who suffer from PTSD have, chronic suicidal thoughts, self-injury and explosive anger, dissociative episodes (which in African countries can be in the form of trance or possession states), somatization, memory disturbances, sense of helplessness and hopelessness, isolation and withdrawal, poor relationships, distrust and loss of faith. Because of PTSD many children avoid places and conversations related to experiences from their past. Some children will avoid their native villages all together due to the shame and guilt they feel from the war (Somasundaram & Jayatunge 2016).

     Almost every time, child soldiers have difficulty with their community relationships after their release from the war due to the guilt they feel, but  researchers have found that former child soldiers from Sierra Leone who live in communities in which they feel accepted are less depressed and more confident, and children who are able to stay in school show a positive attitude and behavior (Studies Explore Effects 2010).


Sources:
Science Daily: Studies explore effects of war on former child soldiers
Psychosocial problems of child soldiers
Studies explore effects of war on former child soldiers
Life after death: Helping former child soldiers become whole again
Mental Health and Life After War for Child Soldiers