Psychosocial wellbeing in war-affected Eastern Congolese adolescents

Despite remarkable advances made, the knowledge base on the mental health effects of war on children and adolescents remains restricted by certain limitations, e.g., geographic predominance, a trauma-focused approach, cross-cultural validity issues and limited usefulness for practitioners. In response to these limitations, this dissertation aims to assess the psychosocial wellbeing of war-affected adolescents in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) within a social ecological framework, bringing the cultural and social war-affected context into account, and building on the local community’s experiences and resources. Great emphasis is placed on creating the appropriate conditions for the local relevance and cultural validity of our research during a first study, aimed at understanding the locally perceived context for adolescent mental health on the one hand, and the cross-cultural adaptation of DSM-IV-based screening instruments (Impact of Event Scale Revised, Hopkins Symptom Checklist 37 for Adolescents) on the other. This in turn informed our second study aimed at assessing adolescents’ mental health symptoms (post-traumatic stress symptoms, internalizing and externalizing behaviour problems), with a main focus on associated risk (traumatic exposure, daily stressors, displacement) and protective factors (residential stability, coping). Likewise, high importance was ascribed to the establishment of feasible and locally relevant implications and recommendations for practice. Therefore, a third study analyzed the local context for adolescent psychosocial assistance, aimed at informing future psychosocial programming in Ituri, DRC. Furthermore, these contextual data offer us a framework for the general discussion of our research findings and its clinical implications

Checklist · Geography · Mental health · Political science · Psychiatry · Psychosocial · Social environment · Stressor · Clinical Psychology · Family Support in Illness · Migration, Health and Trauma · Psychology · Resilience and Mental Health