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Former child soldiers with ptsd improve after targeted treatmentintervention by efwegbe erergeer
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Former child soldiers with ptsd improve after targeted treatmentintervention |
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According to a study of JAMA , (August 3 theme issue on violence and human rights) former childsoldiers from Northern Uganda who underwent a short-termtrauma-focused intervention showed a greater reduction of symptomsof post-traumatic stress disorder than soldiers who received other therapy. Current estimates state that approximately 250,000 children underthe age of 18 are currently active as child soldiers in hostilitiesin 14 countries or territories worldwide. The Northern Uganda civilwar lasted over 2 decades and has virtually affected the entirepopulation. According to background information in the article: "The Northern Ugandan communities have been confronted with largenumbers of formerly abducted children, adolescents, and youngadults returning after their rescue, flight, or release throughoutthe war and thereafter. The successful reintegration of theseformer child soldiers continues to be a major challenge.
Despitehigh rates of impairment, there have been no randomized controlledtrials examining the feasibility and efficacy of mental healthinterventions for former child soldiers." Verena Ertl, Ph.D., of Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany,and her fellow researchers conducted a randomized controlled trialtesting the feasibility and effectiveness of narrative exposuretherapy for treating former child soldiers with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Narrative exposure therapy (NET) is a short-term treatment fortrauma victims developed for use in low-resource countries affectedby crisis and war. NET enables participants to recollect details oftheir traumatic and often fragmented experiences in cooperationwith a therapist who reconstructs their memories of traumaticevents to achieve habituation. The trial consisted of 85 formerchild soldiers between the ages of 12 to 25 with PTSD from apopulation-based survey of 1,113 Northern Ugandans and wasconducted in internal displacement camps between November 2007 andOctober 2009. Participants were randomly split into 1 of 3 groups consisting ofnarrative exposure therapy (n = 29), an academic catch-up programwith elements of supportive counseling (n = 28), or a waiting list(n = 28) with treatments carried out in 8 sessions by trained locallay therapists in their respective communities.
The symptoms of PTSD, depression , and related impairment were evaluated before treatment commencedand at 3 months, 6 months, and 12 months post-intervention usingvarious analytic tools. Researchers discovered that the severity ofPTSD symptoms improved significantly more in the NET group comparedto the academic catch-up and waiting-list groups. During one measure of clinically significant change, 80% (20 of 25participants) in the NET group had reduced the severity of theirPTSD. The authors wrote: "In the academic catch-up and waiting-list conditions, 11 of 23(47.8%) and 14 of 28 (50%), respectively, showed clinicallyrelevant improvement.
Subgroup comparisons revealed thatimprovement was significantly greater in the narrative exposuretherapy group vs. the academic catch-up group and the narrativeexposure therapy vs. the waiting-list groups." After 12 months of trial, 68% of NET participants, 52.2% ofacademic catch-up participants, and 53.6% of waiting-listparticipants no longer fulfilled criteria for PTSD. The 12-monthfollow up revealed that NET participants experienced a largerwithin-treatment effect of 51.6% of reducing the severity of PTSDcompared to 30.9% of the academic catch-up group and 30.4% of thewaiting list group. The Researchers stated: "Moreover, results indicated that there were additional positiveeffects of treatment on associated problems not primarily targeted,such as depression, suicidal ideation, feelings of guilt, andimportant indicators of readjustment such as stigmatization andfunctioning." The author concludes that the results of this study indicate thatcommunity-based lay therapists without a mental health or medical background can apply narrative exposure therapysuccessfully.
Written by Grace Rattue Copyright: Medical News Today Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today Additional References Citations. I am Agricultural Waste writer, reports some information about spring loaded latch , steel base plates.
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