but I've read there are very, very few (four? if I remember correctly) psychologists/psychiatrists in Afghanistan to treat a whole population affected by PTSD, especially the children. I've read the numbers are astronomical. How could they not be? And in Iraq as well, seeing your family blown up, having fathers, brothers, uncles, neighbours just disappear, not knowing if you'll ever see them again - I can imagine that PTSD and the depression, anxiety and suicides that go along with it would be terrible. I think the numbers would be much, much higher.
I was wrong:
And we’re right to be concerned about the still-inadequate care U.S. veterans get when they come home – soldiers can be simultaneously victim and war criminal. (Iraq Veterans Against the War have mobilized their Operation Recovery campaign to defend soldiers’ right to heal before being redeployed – a campaign that also denies the Pentagon access to these young instruments of battle for illegal wars.) But we shouldn’t forget that those 2/3 of Afghans – something like 20 million people – face PTSD or other mental disorders with only FORTY-TWO psychiatrists and psychologists in the entire country
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101622574
One of the few accounts of living under drones ever published in the US came from a former New York Times journalist who was kidnapped by the Taliban for months in FATA.[472] In his account, David Rohde described both the fear the drones inspired among his captors, as well as among ordinary civilians: “The drones were terrifying. From the ground, it is impossible to determine who or what they are tracking as they circle overhead. The buzz of a distant propeller is a constant reminder of imminent death.”[473] Describing the experience of living under drones as ‘hell on earth’, Rohde explained that even in the areas where strikes were less frequent, the people living there still feared for their lives.[474]
Community members, mental health professionals, and journalists interviewed for this report described how the constant presence of US drones overhead leads to substantial levels of fear and stress in the civilian communities below.[475] One man described the reaction to the sound of the drones as “a wave of terror” coming over the community. “Children, grown-up people, women, they are terrified. . . . They scream in terror.”[476] Interviewees described the experience of living under constant surveillance as harrowing. In the words of one interviewee: “God knows whether they’ll strike us again or not. But they’re always surveying us, they’re always over us, and you never know when they’re going to strike and attack.”[477] Another interviewee who lost both his legs in a drone attack said that “[e]veryone is scared all the time. When we’re sitting together to have a meeting, we’re scared there might be a strike. When you can hear the drone circling in the sky, you think it might strike you. We’re always scared. We always have this fear in our head.”[478]
A Pakistani psychiatrist, who has treated patients presenting symptoms he attributed to experience with or fear of drones, explained that pervasive worry about future trauma is emblematic of “anticipatory anxiety,”[479] common in conflict zones.[480] He explained that the Waziris he has treated who suffer from anticipatory anxiety are constantly worrying, “‘when is the next drone attack going to happen? When they hear drone sounds, they run around looking for shelter.”[481] Another mental health professional who works with drone victims concluded that his patients’ stress symptoms are largely attributable to their belief that “[t]hey could be attacked at any time.”[482]
http://www.livingunderdrones.org/report/
The scars inside: An Iraqi refugee opens up about PTSD
By Shuka Kalantari
http://kalw.org/post/scars-inside-iraqi-refugee-opens-about-ptsd
A study by the Iraqi Society of Psychiatrists in collaboration with the World Health Organization found that 70 percent of children (sample 10,000) in the Sha'ab section of North Baghdad are suffering from trauma-related symptoms. Even if this study is not completely replicated in the whole of Iraq, it clearly shows that huge numbers of children are growing up with mental problems.Many of these children have seen close family members killed; they have walked in streets where they have seen dead and mutilated bodies just lying around. If left untreated, what impact will these mental problems have on the future of Iraq?
First, of course, the suffering, the stress, and the depression that afflicts these children must be alleviated. All of Iraqi society must see that providing expert medical intervention to help these children cope is a moral imperative. The effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder are bad enough for professional soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. It is hard to imagine the effects on a child growing up amongst such carnage. In macho Iraqi society, such children, particularly the boys, tend to suffer in silence for fear of being labelled wimps. In any case, expertise to treat such cases is woefully inadequate in Iraq.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/adnan-aldaini/the-plight-of-iraqi-child_b_1184324.html
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