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As IDPs are highly exposed to violence and daily stressors, they report most psychological distress, when compared to returnees and non-displaced peers. The distinct mental health outcomes for returned youngsters illustrate how enhancing current socio-economic living conditions of war-affected adolescents could stimulate resilient outcomes, despite former trauma or displacement.

In this article, we test the hypothesis that beliefs about the ideal mother are convergent across cultures and that these beliefs overlap considerably with attachment theory's notion of the sensitive mother. In a sample including 26 cultural groups from 15 countries around the globe, 751 mothers sorted the Maternal Behavior Q-Set to reflect their ideas about the ideal mother. The results show strong convergence between maternal beliefs about the ideal mother and attachment theory's description of the sensitive mother across groups. Cultural group membership significantly predicted variations in maternal sensitivity belief scores, but this effect was substantially accounted for by group variations in socio-demographic factors. Mothers living in rural versus urban areas, with a low family income, and with more children, were less likely to describe the ideal mother as highly sensitive. Cultural group membership did remain a significant predictor of variations in maternal sensitivity belief scores above and beyond socio-demographic predictors. The findings are discussed in terms of the universal and culture-specific aspects of the sensitivity construct.

Community-based adaptation can extend the validity and local relevance of mental health screening in emergency and low-income settings. The availability of adequate Swahili and Congolese French adaptations of the IES-R and HSCL-37A could stimulate the assessment of psychosocial needs in war-exposed Eastern Congolese adolescents.

Participants: One thousand forty-six adolescents and young adults aged 13 to 21 years completed a selfreport questionnaire. Main Exposures: War-related traumatic events, posttraumatic stress symptoms, and sociodemographic variables. Main Outcomes Measures: The Adolescent Complex Emergency Exposure Scale, specifically designed for this region, screened for exposure to potentially traumatic events, and the Impact of Event Scale-Revised measured symptoms of posttraumatic stress consistent with Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fourth Edition) criteria. Results: Among the 477 girls (45.6%) and 569 boys (54.4%) in the study, 95.0% reported at least 1 traumatic event. On average, adolescents were exposed to 4.71 traumatic events, with higher exposure rates reported in boys, older groups, rural and urban areas, and respondents whose mother or father was dead. Of 990 respondents, 52.2% met symptom criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder. Symptom scores were strongly related to cumulative trauma exposure; however, the strength of this relationship differed slightly across living area groups for girls. Conclusion: Adolescents in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are highly exposed to political violence, putting them at a considerable risk-mediated by living area and sex-to develop posttraumatic stress symptoms.

The provision of social support could enhance UASC's well-being through buffering effects (e.g. social companionship as avoidant/distractive coping) and main effects (acceptance by Belgian peers enhancing self-esteem). The asylum centre shows a great potential to stimulate UASC's psychological well-being by expanding the psychosocial function of staff members and community treatment.

BackgroundWorldwide, thousands of children are acting in different roles in armed groups. Whereas human rights activism and humanitarian imperatives tend to emphasize the image of child soldiers as incapable victims of adults’ abusive compulsion, this image does not fully correspond with prevailing pedagogical and jurisprudential discourses, nor does it represent all child soldiers’ own perceptions of their role. Moreover, contemporary warfare is often marked by fuzzy distinctions between perpetrators and victims. This article deepens on the question how to conceptualize the victim-perpetrator imaginary about child soldiers, starting from three disciplines, children’s rights law, psychosocial approaches and transitional justice, and then proceeding into an interdisciplinary approach.DiscussionWe argue that the victim–perpetrator dichotomy in relation to child soldiers needs to be revisited, and that this can only be done successfully through a truly interdisciplinary approach. Key to this interdisciplinary dialogue is the growing awareness within all three disciplines, but admittedly only marginally within children’s rights law, that only by moving beyond the binary distinction between victim- and perpetrator-hood, the complexity of childhood soldiering can be grasped. In transitional justice, the concept of role reversal has been instructive, and in psychosocial studies, emphasis has been put on the ‘agency’ of (former) child soldiers, whereby child soldiers sometimes account on how joining the armed force or group was (partially) out of their own free will. Hence, child soldiers’ perpetrator-hood is not only part of the way child soldiers are perceived in the communities they return to, but equally of the way they see themselves. These findings plea for more contextualized approaches, including a greater participation of child soldiers, the elaboration of accountability mechanisms beyond criminal responsibility, and an intimate connection between individual, social and societal healing by paying more attention to reconciliation.SummaryThis article deepens on the question how to conceptualize the victim-perpetrator imaginary about child soldiers through an interdisciplinary dialogue between children’s rights law, psychosocial approaches and transitional justice. With this interdisciplinary perspective, we intend to open up narrow disciplinary viewpoints, and contribute to more integrated approaches, beyond a binary distinction between victimhood and perpetrator-hood.

Resumen: La violencia comunitaria forma parte de la vida cotidiana de cada vez más niños y jóvenes, particularmente en las grandes ciudades. La exposición a este tipo de violencia ha sido asociada con el desarrollo de varios problemas conductuales y emocionales, tales como conductas agresivas y delincuentes, ansiedad y depresión. Este estudio pretende explorar la exposición de adolescentes uruguayos en situación de vulnerabilidad socioeconómica a la violencia comunitaria y su impacto percibido, e investigar su relación con problemas internalizantes y externalizantes reportados por ellos. Se consiguió una muestra de 101 adolescentes de 13 a 18 años en la ciudad de Montevideo, pertenecientes a tres centros socioeducativos seleccionados deliberadamente y por conglomerado. Se administró el Hopkins Symptom Checklist para adolescentes, la Escala de Violencia Comunitaria y un cuestionario sociodemográfico. Se encontró que el 84,2% de la muestra había sido expuesto a la violencia comunitaria. El impacto percibido de la violencia apareció como predictor de problemas internalizantes, junto a la variable edad. Los resultados sugieren que diferentes mecanismos explican los distintos tipos de problemas psicológicos investigados. Se discuten las implicaciones para la intervención y la prevención.Abstract: Community violence increasingly forms part of the daily lives of children and youth, particularly in large cities. Exposure to this type of violence has been associated with the development of various behavioral and emotional problems, such as aggressive and delinquent behaviors, anxiety and depression. This study aims to explore the exposure of socioeconomically vulnerable Uruguayan adolescents to community violence and its perceived impact, and investigate its relationship with internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. We obtained a sample of 101 adolescents aged 13 to 18 years, residing in the city of Montevideo, attending to 3 socio-educational centers purposefully selected and clustered. The Hopkins Symptom Checklist for adolescents, a scale for community violence and a sociodemographic questionnaire were administered. We found that 84.2% of our sample had been exposed to community violence. The perceived impact of exposure appeared as a predictor of psychological problems, together with the variable age. The results suggest that several mechanisms explain the different kinds of psychological problems investigated. Implications for intervention and prevention were discussed.Palabras clave: adolescencia, trauma, salud mental, pobreza, violencia comunitaria.