War Traumatized Adolescents (WTA): A Study on the Coping Strategies Adopted by the School Going Adolescents, Vavuniya, Sri Lanka.

Abstract

Abstract This study on traumatized adolescents presents the causes and consequences of psychosocial impacts of war on a select cohort of traumatized adolescents. It initially contextualizes the problem by narrating the physical and psychological impacts of war on people. The sample of school going adolescents was selected from the Southern Educational Zone of Vavuniya in northern Sri Lanka, an area predominantly occupied by Sri Lankan Tamils. The relevant information on those traumatized adolescents was obtained from medical practitioners, school teachers and others who had worked with the said traumatized adolescents. A survey was conducted thereafter to obtain the required qualitative data. In many instances semi-structured interviews were held to elicit additional information. The coping strategies adopted by the said school children were then analyzed using the BASIC-Ph multi-dimensional approach, based on the multi-modal therapy (Lahad, 1992). In this study, the conceptualization of coping is based on a proposal by Lahad and his colleagues in which coping is viewed as a response to perceived stress which was defined as "constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific external and/or internal demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of a person”. Findings of the research revealed that the selected samples of adolescents were least resilient to severe impacts of war and that their coping mechanisms varied due to varying factors such as their personality, social support, and spirituality. Overall, it may be said that nearly all of them showed symptoms of having been traumatized at different levels, with many of them needing psychosocial support.