How should we help the post war soldiers of Sri Lanka rebuild their resilience?

Nia Chakhnashvili
European School AHS
Ms. Chakhnashvili A. Teacher
AP Seminar
March 4 , 2023
Word count:
 Individuals, families and communities in Northern Sri Lanka have undergone three
decades of war trauma, multiple displacements, and loss of family, friends, homes,
employment and other valued resources.
Disasters, whether natural, for example a tsunami, or manmade as in war, are now recognized
to cause a variety of psychological and psychiatric sequelae. These could range from adaptive
and resilient coping responses to understandable non-pathological distress as well as a
number of maladaptive behavioral patterns to diagnosable psychiatric disorders.

In May, 2009, Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared that the country's 25-year
conflict had finally come to an end. After nearly three decades of fighting, Sri Lankan
emigrants all over the world and politicians celebrated the end of the war, and as the media
spotlight moved elsewhere, the people of war-torn Sri Lanka had to pick up and continue
with day-to-day life. And, as Renuka's story shows, distance and time does not necessarily
heal emotional and mental scars of being in the middle of a war. (Nayanah Siva, a science
writer, 2010)

As a country where mental health issues still carry harmful cultural stigma, Sri Lanka
struggles to provide adequate treatment for the mental illnesses caused by the conflict.

The terror wreaked by the conflict lasted through multiple generations, and the trauma it
created became normalized.

Dave Sacco, a volunteer with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR)
based in Sri Lanka from 1995-1996, explains “The war lasted a long time, but the fighting
was only acute for short, nasty periods… People adapted and life moved on, mostly because
it had to. There were times when, aside from all of the people with guns, life seemed
challenging but still ‘normal.’”

Social norms shifted, and both substance abuse and domestic violence became much more
prevalent. One study reported that 95.6% of children in the Northeast, the most war-affected
region, had experienced at least one incidence of family violence after the war and in 64.2%
of the families, the violence was recurrent. Over 18% of children had suffered at least one
injury as a result of family violence.

The same study found that both substance abuse and exposure to the war were strong
predictors of violence in the home. The Sri Lankan Civil War may have broken the psyche of
its people, but the cycle of violence and societal changes the war effected continued to break
the minds and spirit of the people, even after the fighting had ended.

The Sri Lankan people began to experience a host of mental disorders, but neither the health
system nor society was prepared to address them. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),
various anxiety disorders, major depressive disorder, and somatization disorder — a disorder
marked by numerous medically unexplainable physical symptoms due to psychological
distress — became common among those affected by the war. One study showed a strong
relationship between exposure to war and the number of PTSD symptoms reported, drawing a
direct connection between the war and the mental disorders affecting the population. The
number of suicides skyrocketed, reaching 17.1 per 100,000 citizens in 2012 and making Sri
Lanka the country with the 22nd highest suicide rate in the world.
The government, however, neglected the mental health issues plaguing its citizens, and
focused most of its rehabilitation efforts on the treatment of physical illnesses.

Religion provided a source of resilience for many during the war, but may have also
contributed to the still-present cultural stigma against mental disorders. (OHVIA
MURALEETHARAN, MPH)

The challenge for every prisoner, particularly every political prisoner, is how to survive
prison intact, how to emerge from prison undiminished, how to conserve and even
replenish one’s beliefs. (Mandela)

We discovered that being resilient does not mean that individuals are unaffected by
difficulties, but that they have the ability to draw maximally on personal beliefs,
behaviors, skills, and attitudes to recover from trauma rather than succumbing to its
consequences. (Haiti)

Within ten days, if you return to the observance of moral principles and to the cult of
reason, you will appear a God to them who now esteem you a wild beast or an ape. (7)

This lack of awareness was likely caused by the cultural stigma against mental disorders that
was due, in part, to Buddhist and Hindu religious beliefs in illness as punishment for poor
karma, familial concern for the negative marital effects of mental disorders, and an irrational
fear of unprovoked violence caused by mental illness

abstract : Haiti thing highlights the importance of resilience in relation to risk and
trauma.

Trauma comes from the Greek word for “wound.” Trauma refers either to physical or
to psychological, life- threatening injury resulting from catastrophic personal, familial,
or disaster experiences, from which the individual or community cannot escape, but to
which the reaction is one of terror, helplessness, and a sense of being overwhelmed.5
Consistent with the latter definition, the 2010 Haiti earthquake was unexpected (in
contrast to familiar seasonal hurricanes); the earthquake evoked terror and
helplessness in response to inescapable forces that were beyond the ability of its victims
to manage or resist.