Abstract

Northern Uganda experienced a protracted civil war for over two decades with enormous mental health consequences for the population, especially the youth. In 2011, through Wellcome Trust funded African Institutional Initiative programme to build capacity for health research in Africa, the War-affected Youths Study (WAYS) started a longitudinal research project to chart the trajectory of mental health problems in war-affected youths. Individual, family, and community contextual factors that exacerbate or protect against mental health problems will be examined within the framework of the Stress Vulnerability Model (Schneiderman,Ironson, Siegel, 2005) and the Social Ecology Model (Bronfrenbrenner, 1977, 1994; Earls, Carlson, 2001).

This talk will be on the extent to which different categories of war events predict depression/anxiety in war-affected youths in northern Uganda (N = 539, baseline age = 26.18; SD=4.96, min-max = 18 – 35; age at abduction = 14.14, SD= 4.21, min-max = 7-28). We used univariable and multivariable regression models to determine the individual and unique influence of various categories of war events on symptoms of depression/anxiety and further examined between and within sex differences in stratified analyses. “Witnessing violence”, “deaths” and sexual abuse were the most toxic and pervasive predictors of depression/anxiety, especially if the youths were abducted at a young age. Interventions to mitigate the mental health consequences of the war should take into consideration the different types of war events.