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Gender, mental health and resilience in armed conflict: listening to life stories of internally displaced women in Colombia

For over 60 years, Colombia has endured violent civil conflict forcibly displacing more than 8 million people. Recent efforts have begun to explore mental health consequences of these contexts, with an emphasis on national surveys. To date few Colombian studies explore mental health and well-being f...

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Autores principales: Zamora-Moncayo, Emilia, Burgess, Rochelle A., Fonseca, Laura, González-Gort, Mónica, Kakuma, Ritsuko
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BMJ Publishing Group 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8499256/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34620613
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2021-005770
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author Zamora-Moncayo, Emilia
Burgess, Rochelle A.
Fonseca, Laura
González-Gort, Mónica
Kakuma, Ritsuko
author_facet Zamora-Moncayo, Emilia
Burgess, Rochelle A.
Fonseca, Laura
González-Gort, Mónica
Kakuma, Ritsuko
author_sort Zamora-Moncayo, Emilia
collection PubMed
description For over 60 years, Colombia has endured violent civil conflict forcibly displacing more than 8 million people. Recent efforts have begun to explore mental health consequences of these contexts, with an emphasis on national surveys. To date few Colombian studies explore mental health and well-being from a lived experience perspective. Those that do, overlook processes that enable survival. In response to this gap, we conducted a life history study of seven internally displaced Colombian women in the Cundinamarca department, analysing 18 interview sessions and 36 hours of transcripts. A thematic network analysis, informed by Latin-American perspectives on gender and critical resilience frameworks, explored women’s coping strategies in response to conflict-driven hardships related to mental well-being. Analysis illuminated that: (1) the gendered impacts of the armed conflict on women’s emotional well-being work through exacerbating historical gendered violence and inequality, intensifying existing emotional health challenges, and (2) coping strategies reflect women’s ability to mobilise cognitive, bodied, social, material and symbolic power and resources. Our findings highlight that the sociopolitical contexts of women’s lives are inseparable from their efforts to achieve mental well-being, and the value of deep narrative and historical work to capturing the complexity of women’s experiences within conflict settings. We suggest the importance of social interventions to support the mental health of women in conflict settings, in order to centre the social and political contexts faced by such marginalised groups within efforts to improve mental health.
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spelling pubmed-84992562021-10-22 Gender, mental health and resilience in armed conflict: listening to life stories of internally displaced women in Colombia Zamora-Moncayo, Emilia Burgess, Rochelle A. Fonseca, Laura González-Gort, Mónica Kakuma, Ritsuko BMJ Glob Health Original Research For over 60 years, Colombia has endured violent civil conflict forcibly displacing more than 8 million people. Recent efforts have begun to explore mental health consequences of these contexts, with an emphasis on national surveys. To date few Colombian studies explore mental health and well-being from a lived experience perspective. Those that do, overlook processes that enable survival. In response to this gap, we conducted a life history study of seven internally displaced Colombian women in the Cundinamarca department, analysing 18 interview sessions and 36 hours of transcripts. A thematic network analysis, informed by Latin-American perspectives on gender and critical resilience frameworks, explored women’s coping strategies in response to conflict-driven hardships related to mental well-being. Analysis illuminated that: (1) the gendered impacts of the armed conflict on women’s emotional well-being work through exacerbating historical gendered violence and inequality, intensifying existing emotional health challenges, and (2) coping strategies reflect women’s ability to mobilise cognitive, bodied, social, material and symbolic power and resources. Our findings highlight that the sociopolitical contexts of women’s lives are inseparable from their efforts to achieve mental well-being, and the value of deep narrative and historical work to capturing the complexity of women’s experiences within conflict settings. We suggest the importance of social interventions to support the mental health of women in conflict settings, in order to centre the social and political contexts faced by such marginalised groups within efforts to improve mental health. BMJ Publishing Group 2021-10-07 /pmc/articles/PMC8499256/ /pubmed/34620613 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2021-005770 Text en © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2021. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Original Research
Zamora-Moncayo, Emilia
Burgess, Rochelle A.
Fonseca, Laura
González-Gort, Mónica
Kakuma, Ritsuko
Gender, mental health and resilience in armed conflict: listening to life stories of internally displaced women in Colombia
title Gender, mental health and resilience in armed conflict: listening to life stories of internally displaced women in Colombia
title_full Gender, mental health and resilience in armed conflict: listening to life stories of internally displaced women in Colombia
title_fullStr Gender, mental health and resilience in armed conflict: listening to life stories of internally displaced women in Colombia
title_full_unstemmed Gender, mental health and resilience in armed conflict: listening to life stories of internally displaced women in Colombia
title_short Gender, mental health and resilience in armed conflict: listening to life stories of internally displaced women in Colombia
title_sort gender, mental health and resilience in armed conflict: listening to life stories of internally displaced women in colombia
topic Original Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8499256/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34620613
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2021-005770
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