I begin with a true story.



  
Eight years later…
Samanthi has developed into a bright and engaging young woman who loves to dance, reads voraciously, and takes prides in helping her younger sister with her homework. She tears up when talking about the death of her father, but says the loss no longer overwhelms her. Most of the time, she says, she feels happy and enjoys school and spending time with her friends. She credits her wellbeing to the comfort and compassion of her mother, who made space for her children’s grief (and her own). She shows no lingering signs of trauma or depression, despite the horrific experience of her father's death.


Samanthi also describes the psychological importance of the Buddhist ritual of dane, or almsgiving. Gifts and meals are provided to the local monks, who in turn offer elaborate prayer ceremonies meant to ensure that the souls of the deceased will not suffer a similar fate in a future life.
Sharmali, too, has grown older, but her grief has not lessened with the biology of time. Emotions have their own clock, and they can become unhinged from the rhythm and flow of time in the physical world. Sharmali has been unable to move beyond the despair of losing her father. Sweet and soft-spoken, she seems on the verge of being overwhelmed by the intensity of her pain. She recently dropped out of school, has no pleasurable activities, and spends her days in the dark, unadorned home she shares with her mother and younger siblings. Sharmali’s mother cannot tolerate her daughter’s grief, nor does she permit herself any sadness regarding the death of her husband. “Sadness is for weak people”, she insists, and explains that Buddhism emphasizes non-attachment, so there is no need for sadness. She does not mention compassion, another central tenet of Buddhism. She readily acknowledges striking her daughter in moments of anger.


What can we learn from these two young women, who shared the same tragic experience, yet developed in such powerfully different ways? Their stories tell us some vital truths about how children cope with the violence and heartbreak of war.

"We are as resilient as we are fragile."

Borrowing from James Garbarino's introduction to my book War Torn, not all children exposed to potentially traumatic experiences go on to develop psychological trauma or PTSD. In fact, research consistently shows that only a minority of war-affected children develop PTSD, depression, or other psychiatric disorders. This doesn't mean they don't feel distress; war and all the chaos and destruction it creates are highly distressing. It simply means that children are more resilient than early reports suggested, and that normal distress does not invariably evolve into enduring psychological disorder.

A host of factors influence how children react to experiences of violence and loss.

Simply knowing which war-related events a child has experienced does not allow us to predict how he or she will be affected in the long term. The nature of the events they have experienced, the degree of emotional and practical support available within and outside the family, and their own unique strengths and vulnerabilities all play a role in how children adapt to both acute and chronic adversity (Tol, Song, & Jordans, 2013).

Research suggests that the most powerful influence on children’s resilience or vulnerability to the experience of war is the family environment.

Parents and other caregivers can play a powerful role in protecting children from the adverse effects of war, as we saw with Samanthi and her mother. Conversely, the chronic stress of living through war can heighten parental tension, leading to an increase in harsh or abusive parenting as well as intimate partner violence (Catani, Schauer, & Neuner, 2008). Parents traumatized or depressed by war-related violence and loss may struggle to respond effectively to their children’s physical and emotional needs (Miller & Jordans, 2016). And like Sharmali’s mother, parents may simply lack the capacity to respond to the intensity of their children’s distress in the wake of terrible events.

Cultural beliefs and rituals can play an important role in helping children and families heal from war-related trauma and loss.

In the Buddhist village of Gonagala, a powerful source of comfort and healing for survivors of the massacre was the belief in reincarnation and the tradition of dane. Among Guatemalan Mayan survivors of the military’s genocidal scorched earth campaign, religious faith offered comfort, and traditional healers (curanderos) helped heal susto, a fear-related syndrome believed to entail the loss of one’s soul following a terrible fright (Miller, 2016). Among Afghans, the Islamic concept of sabr, or patience and faith in God, can play a powerful role in helping people cope with painful life events. An Orthodox Christian priest I knew once told a persistently depressed Bosnian Serb woman that it was time to move on and stop grieving for her lost son. She'd grieved long enough to honor him, the priest said, and staying depressed would now dishonor his memory. Her depression lifted within a few days. His words, permission from a culturally valued authority to move on with her life, accomplished what a year of psychotherapy and anti-depressant medication could not. Spiritual beliefs and rituals may not fully heal the effects of war-related violence and loss, but they offer comfort and can provide some degree of meaning to what may otherwise seem like meaningless tragedy.   

No culture has yet developed methods of healing powerful enough to consistently mend the social and psychological damage that war inflicts.

This suggests the power of bringing together methods of healing from diverse cultures, gathering evidence on what works well for whom under which conditions, and bringing to scale those interventions shown to be effective. Promising signs of this cultural blending can be seen in the adaptation of Eastern mindfulness techniques for use with survivors of war in Africa and the Middle East, the use of Indian yogic practices and African drumming and dance with traumatized refugees in the West, and the use of cognitive-behavioral (CBT) techniques to help distressed children in culturally diverse conflict and post-conflict settings. Some interventions aim to foster resilience through enhancing life skills, while others focus on reducing distress among more severely affected children and families. Some programs aim at reducing parental distress while strengthening parenting under high stress conditions, while others focus on ensuring that schools serving war-affected children are genuinely supportive and safe places. At this point, we're really just beginning to learn what works. Research findings can offer a roadmap, still evolving for sure, but starting to point the way.