Psychological After-effects of War in Displaced Women

Abstract

The psychological after-effects of violence due to the armed conflict have left traumatic memories or indelible stigma in victimized women. Females are overrepresented since they compose more than half of the victims in the Colombian warfare. (Sierra, Calle, and Vélez, 2015). Thus, we considered the following research question: What psychological after-effects of war prevail in displaced women? In this research project, we defined psychological after-effects of war as signs, symptoms and psychological disorders based on the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Moreover, we defined forced migration as the movement of people, families and groups away from their homes to other places. This movement is coerced by a powerful actor or group to expel, harass and uproot a person, group or community. We adopted a social psychological perspective to study the after-effects of war in displaced women. This is a narrative review in which we included manuscripts from academic journals, institutional reports and books. The inclusion criteria were the following: manuscripts published and indexed from 2005 to 2015, and generalizability of the results. We selected the following academic data-bases: Academic Search Complete, Medline, Redalyc, EBSCO, Google Scholar, and Science Direct. We selected 7 out of 50 papers that fulfilled the inclusion criteria. The results showed that displaced women suffer from mood, impulse control and behavioral disorders. These disorders prevail due to the after-effects of war. Whereas fear, helplessness, anger and uprooting are equally conducive to the emotional stability that they experience. We conclude that war directly and indirectly affects the mental health of women forced to emigrate, causing mental disorders and psychological alterations.

Keywords

• conflicto armado
• migración
• revisión narrativa
• secuela psicológica
• violencia
• violencia de género