Stress on a Child's Development: Violence

I picked violence even though I was not exposed to it as a child, as far as I can remember. However I do feel as if it is an important subject. I am a part of an organization called NOVA, which is Network for Overcoming Violence and abuse, so this subject is near and dear to my heart. NOVA is a network of public and private agency partners connecting a community of trained adults to children and youth exposed to violence — for trauma counseling, parenting support and other family assistance (NOVA 2012). I am a part of this organization not just because it is my job but because I care about the welfare of our children and know the damaging effects of what this exposure can do to them. I am a CSEFEL Specialist (center on social emotional foundations of early learning) at LeBonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis, TN as a part of their Community Health & Well Being division. My job is to train childcare providers on dealing with and identifying children that have behavior problems or that have been exposed to domestic violence. I train them on teaching children social emotional skills and dealing with children that have behavior problems. I am the support system for teachers so that their teaching can go beyond school work and teach children ways to deal with problems faced in their lives.

The Network for Overcoming Violence and Abuse (NOVA) is a Shelby County system of care being initiated in Memphis neighborhoods in the Raleigh-Frayser and Hickory Hill areas that connects children exposed to violence and abuse - and their families - to counseling and other support services. Too many families in our communities - and far too many children - have experienced the trauma that comes with seeing or experiencing violence of all kinds. The good news is help is available.

NOVA is a response to the problem of trauma that happens after exposure to violence. NOVA offers all the help that children and their families need to put the hurt behind them, to heal, and to live their lives with hope. Real hope.

Get more info at: http://www.shelbycountynova.net/about.htmls

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I found an article on violence in Iraq and its impact on the children that witness it.

Children of war: the generation traumatized by violence in Iraq

Growing up in a war zone takes its toll as young play games of murder and mayhem

Michael Howard in Baghdad

The Guardian, Monday 5 February 2007

 

 

Iraqi boys in a refugee camp in Baghdad play with toy guns. Photograph: Namir Noor-Eldeen/Reuters

The car stopped at the makeshift checkpoint that cut across the muddy backstreet in western Baghdad. A sentry appeared. "Are you Sunni or Shia?" he barked, waving his Kalashnikov at the driver. "Are you with Zarqawi or the Mahdi army?"

"The Mahdi army," the driver said. "Wrong answer," shouted the sentry, almost gleefully. "Get him!"

The high metal gate of a nearby house was flung open and four gun-toting males rushed out. They dragged the driver from his vehicle and held a knife to his neck. Quickly and efficiently, the blade was run from ear to ear. "Now you're dead," said a triumphant voice, and their captive crumpled to the ground.

Then a moment of stillness before the sound of a woman's voice. "Come inside boys! Your dinner is ready!" The gunmen groaned; the hapless driver picked himself up and trundled his yellow plastic car into the front yard; the toy guns and knives were tossed by the back door. Their murderous game of make-believe would have to resume in the morning.

Abdul-Muhammad and his five younger brothers, aged between six and 12, should have been at school. But their mother, Sayeeda, like thousands of parents in Iraq's perilous capital city, now keeps her boys at home. Three weeks ago, armed men had intercepted their teacher's car at the school gates, then hauled him out and slit his throat. Just like in their game.

"That day they came home and they were changed because of the things they'd seen," said Sayeeda as she ladled rice into the boys' bowls. "The youngest two have been wetting their beds and having nightmares, while Abdul-Muhammad has started bullying and ordering everyone to play his fighting games. I know things are not normal with them. My fear is one day they will get hold of real guns. But in these times, where is the help?"

The boys live with their widowed mother and uncle in a modest family house in al-Amil, a once peaceful, religiously mixed suburb in western Baghdad that is yielding to the gunmen, street by street. Similar tales of growing up in the war zone are heard across the country.

Parents, teachers and doctors contacted by the Guardian over the past three months cite a litany of distress signals sent out by young people in their care - from nightmares and bedwetting to withdrawal, muteness, panic attacks and violence towards other children, sometimes even to their own parents.

Amid the statistical haze that enshrouds civilian casualties, no one is sure how many children have been killed or maimed in Iraq. But psychologists and aid organisations warn that while the physical scars of the conflict are all too visible - in hospitals and mortuaries and on television screens - the mental and emotional turmoil experienced by Iraq's young is going largely unmonitored and untreated.

In a rare study published last week, the Association of Iraqi Psychologists (API) said the violence had affected millions of children, raising serious concerns for future generations. It urged the international community to help establish child psychology units and mental health programmes. "Children in Iraq are seriously suffering psychologically with all the insecurity, especially with the fear of kidnapping and explosions," the API's Marwan Abdullah told IRIN, the UN-funded news agency. "In some cases, they're found to be suffering extreme stress," he said.

Sherif Karachatani, a psychology professor at the University of Sulaymaniya, said: "Every day another innocent child is orphaned or sees terrible things children should never see. Who is taking care of the potentially enormous damage being done to a generation of children?"

There are well-founded fears, he said, that the "relentless bloodshed and the lack of professional help will see Iraq's children growing up either deeply scarred or so habituated to violence that they keep the pattern going as they enter adulthood".

The country's overstretched hospitals cannot cope with psychological trauma and many of the best doctors have either fled the country or been killed. The problems are compounded by the stigma that psychological and psychiatric care carries. "They don't bring their children in for treatment, fearing they will be labelled as mad," Dr Karachatani said.

The field is left to small local and foreign NGOs and to hard-pressed Iraqi psychologists, who are not immune to bloodshed. In December, Harith Hassan, one of Iraq's most prominent child psychologists, was shot dead as he drove to work. A regular commentator in the Iraqi media known for his ruthlessly honest comments about the Iraqi mindset, Dr Hassan had worked with victims of trauma. And he had been determined to wean Iraqi youth from their obsession with the gun.