War and Mental Health of Palestinian Children

War and Mental Health of Palestinian Children and Adolescents 1166598 Governors State University Amina Dahleh Psychology 2102 Spring 2018 War and Mental Health of Palestinian Children and Adolescents The active war that has been occurring in Palestine has been the cause of trauma and mental disorders for most Palestinian adolescent and children. Most individuals who experience such happenings are often affected physically, socially, emotionally and psychologically (Shehadeh, Loots, Vanderfaeillie & Derlyun, 2015). Although trauma may be caused by the occurrence of natural calamities such as tsunamis and earthquakes, human instigated disasters such as wars can also lead to trauma. The effects of war across the Palestinian nation have greatly affected children and adolescents living in areas such as the Gaza Strip (UNICEF, 2011). The war between Israel and Palestine has been ongoing since a century ago due to the land conflict between the two nations (Kelman & Fisher, 2017). As a result, a large number of Palestinians have been detained, among them parents of children between the ages of 11-18 years. The detention of Palestinian parents has greatly affected the psychological well-being of the children and adolescents. In most cases, adolescents develop traumatic stress as well as mental issues after witnessing the detention process or after the death of their parents because of the imprisonment. Although war and imprisonment of parents are known to have an impact on the mental health of adolescents and children, the level of effect is not fully understood. This brings the question of how war and parent imprisonments led to trauma and mental disorders among the Palestinian children and adolescents. Most children and adolescents in Palestine suffer from trauma and mental disorders mainly because of the war experiences and the imprisonment of parents, which exposes the children to severe external and internal violence (Thabet & Vostanis, 2015). To determine whether the imprisonment had any effect on the well-being of the children, 79 Palestinian children from families whose fathers had been imprisoned and 99 children from families that had no imprisoned family member were studied (Shehadeh et al., 2015). The mothers of the children filled out a questionnaire that was cross-culturally validated and which had questions relating to the well-being of their children. Researchers found that the children whose fathers were imprisoned showed high signs of mental disorders and traumatic stress. The traumatic stress and mental problems were brought about by the imprisonment of the fathers as well as the witnessing of the fathers capturing (Shehadeh et al., 2015). The study clearly discussed the traumatic experiences that children face in the case of a parent imprisonment. A majority of children and adolescents whose fathers have been captured also tend to feel ashamed and embarrassed. Eventually, they develop antisocial behavior and violence. However, the experiment picked out a small number of children as a sample for the study since there are several factors to consider. These factors include reasons why the parent was detained, the living standards of the family since some families might reside in urban areas and others in rural areas, and gender....