juhanbotha: Relentless Afghan war leaves generation traumatized

Friday, November 16, 2012

Relentless Afghan war leaves generation traumatized

Adnan Abidi / Reuters

Patients sit inside their ward at a mental hospital in Kabul on November 11, 2012. The war in Afghanistan is creating a generation of people mentally damaged by their exposure to incessant conflict, a buildup of problems which could undermine the country's reconstruction and development efforts.

Reuters reports ??On a low bed in a quiet, all-female hospital ward, a depressed Afghan teenager huddles silently under blankets, her mother close by. In a nearby room are men suffering from schizophrenia, delusions of persecution and power, anxiety and panic disorders.

Among them are some of the unseen victims of the war in Afghanistan: a generation of people mentally damaged by their exposure to incessant conflict.

Adnan Abidi / Reuters

Ghazia Sadid, 26, a patient suffering from depression, speaks during an interview with Reuters at a mental hospital in Kabul on November 14, 2012.

Aref Karimi / AFP - Getty Images

More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.

Ghazia Sadid, a 26-year-old mother, endured depression for years after a family member was killed in a bomb attack, and she fled her home in fear of more violence.

"I still hear the sounds of explosions. I still remember the fighting, but since I have come here my behavior has changed," she said, speaking at the Kabul Mental Health Hospital, a green-walled building on the outskirts of the city.

"I was totally lost and my life was over. After two years of treatment, now I love my children," she said. "I loved them then too, but in my imagination I had done something wrong." Read the full story.