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Exposures to war-related traumatic events and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms among displaced Darfuri female university students: an exploratory study

BACKGROUND: With the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the displacement of up to three million Darfuris, the increasingly complex and on-going war in Darfur has warranted the need to investigate war-related severity and current mental health levels amongst its civilian population. The purpose of t...

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Autores principales: Badri, Alia, Crutzen, Rik, Van den Borne, H W
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3461465/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22863107
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-12-603
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author Badri, Alia
Crutzen, Rik
Van den Borne, H W
author_facet Badri, Alia
Crutzen, Rik
Van den Borne, H W
author_sort Badri, Alia
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: With the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the displacement of up to three million Darfuris, the increasingly complex and on-going war in Darfur has warranted the need to investigate war-related severity and current mental health levels amongst its civilian population. The purpose of this study is to explore the association between war-related exposures and assess post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms amongst a sample of Darfuri female university students at Ahfad University for Women (AUW) in Omdurman city. METHODS: An exploratory cross-sectional study among a representative sample of Darfuri female university students at AUW (N = 123) was conducted in February 2010. Using an adapted version of the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ), war-related exposures and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms were assessed. Means and standard deviations illustrated the experiential severity of war exposure dimensions and PTSD symptom sub-scales, while Pearson correlations tested for the strength of association between dimensions of war exposures and PTSD symptom sub-scales. RESULTS: Approximately 42 % of the Darfuri participants reported being displaced and 54 % have experienced war-related traumatic exposures either as victims or as witnesses (M = 28, SD = 14.24, range 0 – 40 events). Also, there was a strong association between the experiential dimension of war-related trauma exposures and the full symptom of PTSD. Moreover, the refugee-specific self-perception of functioning sub-scale within the PTSD measurement scored a mean of 3.2 (SD = .56), well above the 2.0 cut-off. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides evidence for a relationship between traumatic war-related exposures and symptom rates of PTSD among AUW Darfuri female students. Findings are discussed in terms of AUW counseling service improvement.
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spelling pubmed-34614652012-10-02 Exposures to war-related traumatic events and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms among displaced Darfuri female university students: an exploratory study Badri, Alia Crutzen, Rik Van den Borne, H W BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: With the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the displacement of up to three million Darfuris, the increasingly complex and on-going war in Darfur has warranted the need to investigate war-related severity and current mental health levels amongst its civilian population. The purpose of this study is to explore the association between war-related exposures and assess post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms amongst a sample of Darfuri female university students at Ahfad University for Women (AUW) in Omdurman city. METHODS: An exploratory cross-sectional study among a representative sample of Darfuri female university students at AUW (N = 123) was conducted in February 2010. Using an adapted version of the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ), war-related exposures and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms were assessed. Means and standard deviations illustrated the experiential severity of war exposure dimensions and PTSD symptom sub-scales, while Pearson correlations tested for the strength of association between dimensions of war exposures and PTSD symptom sub-scales. RESULTS: Approximately 42 % of the Darfuri participants reported being displaced and 54 % have experienced war-related traumatic exposures either as victims or as witnesses (M = 28, SD = 14.24, range 0 – 40 events). Also, there was a strong association between the experiential dimension of war-related trauma exposures and the full symptom of PTSD. Moreover, the refugee-specific self-perception of functioning sub-scale within the PTSD measurement scored a mean of 3.2 (SD = .56), well above the 2.0 cut-off. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides evidence for a relationship between traumatic war-related exposures and symptom rates of PTSD among AUW Darfuri female students. Findings are discussed in terms of AUW counseling service improvement. BioMed Central 2012-08-03 /pmc/articles/PMC3461465/ /pubmed/22863107 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-12-603 Text en Copyright ©2012 Badri et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Badri, Alia
Crutzen, Rik
Van den Borne, H W
Exposures to war-related traumatic events and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms among displaced Darfuri female university students: an exploratory study
title Exposures to war-related traumatic events and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms among displaced Darfuri female university students: an exploratory study
title_full Exposures to war-related traumatic events and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms among displaced Darfuri female university students: an exploratory study
title_fullStr Exposures to war-related traumatic events and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms among displaced Darfuri female university students: an exploratory study
title_full_unstemmed Exposures to war-related traumatic events and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms among displaced Darfuri female university students: an exploratory study
title_short Exposures to war-related traumatic events and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms among displaced Darfuri female university students: an exploratory study
title_sort exposures to war-related traumatic events and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms among displaced darfuri female university students: an exploratory study
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3461465/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22863107
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-12-603
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