J. M. G. Williams (1996) predicted that exposure to potentially traumatizing events at an early age would give rise to overgeneral recall from autobiographical memory, i.e., recall of general rather than specific events, and that in adolescence this tendency would be uncorrelated with psychopathological symptoms, e.g., depression. This was supported by two studies where war-exposed Bosnian adolescents produced significantly fewer specific autobiographical memories than a Norwegian control group, as did bombing-exposed Serbian adolescents compared to nontrauma-exposed Serbians. No significant correlations were found between autobiographical memory specificity and measures of depression, anxiety, dissociation or impact of trauma, which is consistent with Williams' idea that an overgeneral memory retrieval strategy is at first protective, and a risk factor for depression only upon reaching adulthood.

²Research into the psychosocial consequences of war and political violence on children's and adolescent's developmental wellbeing has shown a steady increase over the last decades. Numerous studies, from differing cultures in different war zones around the world, have documented the effect on children of exposure to war atrocities. The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BH) 1992-1995, at the end of 20 th century found the citizens of BH and the world mental health professionals and scientists unprepared to deal with the adverse consequences for the entire BH population and especially for its most vulnerable part, children and adolescents, to be able to take adequate measures of sufficient mental health care to prevent devastating consequences of severe multiple traumas. Only a few research studies were done during and after this war in BH, the United States, Sweden, Norway, the UK and Germany focusing on the relationship between war trauma, Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, suicidal thoughts, acculturation, repatriation, poverty, behavioral problems, school adjustment, relational problems of children and their mothers after deployment of war PTSD veterans and war prisoners, and treatment of psychological consequences in examined children and adolescents from BH. The major part of this paper reviewed available literature on Medline that reported national and international studies which investigated the psychological consequences of war on BH children and adolescents and several papers about children and adolescents from Srebrenica, that were not indexed on Medline, but showed very crucial results for the issue described.

Aim: To estimate frequency, type and severity of the psychological trauma, severity of post-traumatic stress symptoms' clusters and prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among Bosnia-Herzegovina (BH) refugee and internally displaced adolescents after the war 1992-1995. Subjects and Methods: The sample of 217 pupils (106 females) aged of 15.1±2.1 years consisted from three groups of participants originated from different geographical regions from northeastern BH: Srebrenica (n=69), Zvornik (n=79), and Bijeljina (n=69), who were exposed to the war catastrophes in the 1992-1995 war and were forced to leave their homes and property during the whole war and after it. War trauma experiences, PTSD symptoms severity and PTSD prevalence of adolescents were evaluated with Bosnia-Herzegovina version of Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ). Results: The severity level of PTSD symptoms' and social dysfunction was most severe in Srebrenica, than in Zvornik and finally in Bijeljina group. The prevalence of PTSD statistically significantly differed between Srebrenica group (73.9%), Zvornik group (60.8%) and Bijeljina group of respondents (47.6%) (χ²test =9.854, df=2, p=0.007). Conclusions: There were regional variations in Bosnia-Herzegovina warfare. Refugee and internally displaced adolescents suffer very frequently from PTSD 3.5 years after war. The most difficult war trauma was in surviving adolescents from Srebrenica, than Zvornik and finally from Bijeljina. PTSD prevalence is highly reported and significantly differed between groups.