eprintid: 10136314 rev_number: 14 eprint_status: archive userid: 608 dir: disk0/10/13/63/14 datestamp: 2021-10-13 14:12:12 lastmod: 2022-01-13 23:32:29 status_changed: 2021-10-13 14:12:12 type: article metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Zamora-Moncayo, E creators_name: Burgess, RA creators_name: Fonseca, L creators_name: González-Gort, M creators_name: Kakuma, R title: Gender, mental health and resilience in armed conflict: listening to life stories of internally displaced women in Colombia ispublished: pub divisions: UCL divisions: B02 divisions: D01 note: This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. abstract: For over 60 years, Colombia has endured violent civil conflict forcibly displacing more than 8 million people. Recent efforts have begun to explore mental health consequences of these contexts, with an emphasis on national surveys. To date few Colombian studies explore mental health and well-being from a lived experience perspective. Those that do, overlook processes that enable survival. In response to this gap, we conducted a life history study of seven internally displaced Colombian women in the Cundinamarca department, analysing 18 interview sessions and 36 hours of transcripts. A thematic network analysis, informed by Latin-American perspectives on gender and critical resilience frameworks, explored women’s coping strategies in response to conflict-driven hardships related to mental well-being. Analysis illuminated that: (1) the gendered impacts of the armed conflict on women’s emotional well-being work through exacerbating historical gendered violence and inequality, intensifying existing emotional health challenges, and (2) coping strategies reflect women’s ability to mobilise cognitive, bodied, social, material and symbolic power and resources. Our findings highlight that the sociopolitical contexts of women’s lives are inseparable from their efforts to achieve mental well-being, and the value of deep narrative and historical work to capturing the complexity of women’s experiences within conflict settings. We suggest the importance of social interventions to support the mental health of women in conflict settings, in order to centre the social and political contexts faced by such marginalised groups within efforts to improve mental health. date: 2021-10-07 date_type: published publisher: BMJ official_url: http://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2021-005770 oa_status: green full_text_type: pub language: eng primo: open primo_central: open_green verified: verified_manual elements_id: 1892429 doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2021-005770 lyricists_name: Burgess, Rochelle lyricists_id: RBURG33 actors_name: Barczynska, Patrycja actors_id: PBARC91 actors_role: owner full_text_status: public publication: BMJ Global Health volume: 6 number: 10 article_number: e005770 citation: Zamora-Moncayo, E; Burgess, RA; Fonseca, L; González-Gort, M; Kakuma, R; (2021) Gender, mental health and resilience in armed conflict: listening to life stories of internally displaced women in Colombia. BMJ Global Health , 6 (10) , Article e005770. 10.1136/bmjgh-2021-005770 <https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2021-005770>. Green open access document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10136314/1/Burgess_e005770.full.pdf