{"id":11178,"date":"2021-03-01T17:56:03","date_gmt":"2021-03-01T15:56:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/?p=11178"},"modified":"2021-03-01T17:56:35","modified_gmt":"2021-03-01T15:56:35","slug":"more-than-75-of-syrian-refugees-may-have-ptsd-says-charity-syria-relief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/2021\/03\/more-than-75-of-syrian-refugees-may-have-ptsd-says-charity-syria-relief\/","title":{"rendered":"More than 75% of Syrian refugees may have PTSD, says charity Syria Relief"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Guardian<\/a>, originally published on Monday 1 Mars 2021.<\/p>\n

By Kaamil Ahmed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2018There is a huge amount of damage you can\u2019t see \u2013 the mental trauma\u2019, says Syria Relief report author.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Children take part in a kite event at a refugee camp in Syria\u2019s Idlib region near the Turkish border. Photograph: Anadolu Agency\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

More than three-quarters of Syrian refugees may be suffering serious mental health symptoms, 10 years after the start of the civil war.<\/p>\n

A UK charity is calling for more investment in mental health services for refugees in several countries after it found symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were widespread in a survey of displaced Syrians.<\/p>\n

Syria Relief said refugees and people internally displaced by the conflict struggled to find support.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0survey of 721 Syrians living in Lebanon, Turkey and in Idlib<\/a>\u00a0in Syria\u2019s north-west found 84% had at least seven out of 15 key symptoms of PTSD.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t leave the home at all, I just stay in the tent. Sometimes, I have episodes of stress where I feel like breaking everything and hit my husband,\u201d said one woman in\u00a0Lebanon<\/a>, who did not want to be named.<\/p>\n

She said she has struggled to recover from years of accumulating tragedy through the war, including the battle for Aleppo in 2015, losing a newborn child to illness and surviving an attempted rape by a man pretending to offer her work.<\/p>\n

She was eventually referred to a doctor who prescribed her medication. She said it has been hard to find the medicine recently because of drug shortages in Lebanon.<\/p>\n

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\"A

A drawing of \u2018bad things\u2019 by a Syrian refugee child in a school in Hatay, southern Turkey, about 15 miles from the border with Syria.\u00a0Photograph: David Gross\/Alamy<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>

<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to Syria Relief\u2019s report, only 15% of refugees in Lebanon say\u00a0mental health support<\/a>\u00a0is available for them. Among displaced Syrians in Idlib the figure falls to 1%.<\/p>\n

Only two out of 393 people who took part in the survey showed no symptoms linked to PTSD in Idlib, the\u00a0last rebel stronghold<\/a>\u00a0against President Bashar al-Assad\u2019s forces.<\/p>\n

Ibrahim Hanano, a council member in the border town Tel al-Karameh, said there was a desperate need for support in rural areas like his.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are huge amounts of people who need this kind of support. I can\u2019t even count them. There are people who are really unable to recover, they have severe psychological and physical injuries,\u201d he said. \u201cThe only thing we can do is to try to document their situation so that if the local NGOs come to the area we will tell them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ahmad al-Mousa, 24, was badly hurt when a barrel bomb hit his home in Tel al-Karameh in 2014. He said loud sounds, especially of aircraft overhead, still instantly trigger fear for him. He has not found any help for his condition.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t describe how I would feel if I could get rid of this issue, if I could recover fully, if I could feel equal to other people,\u201d said Mousa.<\/p>\n

Syria Relief\u2019s head of communications and advocacy, Charles Lawley, the report\u2019s author, said: \u201cWe have a lot more success in getting aid for physical issues like food or schools. This is the damage you can see from the war, but what I wanted to give a picture of is there is a huge amount of damage you can\u2019t see \u2013 the mental trauma.\u201d<\/p>\n

Diana Rayes, a US-based researcher on mental health among displaced Syrians, said Syria Relief\u2019s survey was not large enough to draw conclusions from, but showed the need for more attention to be paid to the issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know for a fact there\u2019s been\u00a0multigenerational impacts of PTSD<\/a>\u00a0and trauma on the population. We know this is going to affect the children born throughout the conflict,\u201d said Rayes, a PhD candidate at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.<\/p>\n

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\"Syrians

Syrians displaced by Turkish military operations in north-eastern Syria arrive at a refugee camp near the Kurdish city of Dohuk, in Iraq\u2019s autonomous Kurdish region, in October 2019.\u00a0Photograph: Safin Hamed\/AFP via Getty<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>

<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

She said it was important to address mental health and trauma, especially as many Syrians now feel the war has been forgotten.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think the feeling of being forgotten makes things better. I think this is going to be a question for the future of Syria \u2026 it\u2019s unlikely that Syrians will ever return to the country if they don\u2019t feel they\u2019ve reconciled with their trauma.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than 5.6 million people\u00a0have fled Syria<\/a>\u00a0since 2011 and 6.6 million have been internally displaced.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You can download and read the Syria Relief report here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Guardian, originally published on Monday 1 Mars 2021. By Kaamil Ahmed. \u2018There is a huge amount of damage you can\u2019t see \u2013 the mental trauma\u2019, says Syria Relief report author. More than three-quarters of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":11180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,90,85,43,11,57,88,10],"tags":[285,186,471],"class_list":["post-11178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-child-rights","category-editor-selection","category-human-rights","category-human-rights-online-library","category-issues","category-refugees-and-idps","category-slider","category-world","tag-children-and-war","tag-refugees","tag-syria","country-syria","country-world","Documents-conventions"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11178"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11184,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11178\/revisions\/11184"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}