Medeiros, E;
Shrestha, PN;
Gaire, H;
Orr, DMR;
(2020)
Life after armed group involvement in Nepal: A clinical ethnography of psychological well-being of former “child soldiers” over time.
Transcultural Psychiatry
, 57
(1)
pp. 183-196.
10.1177/1363461519850338.
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Abstract
Little is known about the longitudinal effects of early age involvement of young people in armed groups and their well-being as they return to strongly affected, politicised communities. Current research and policy are often driven by the assumption of a causal relationship between participation in this war experience and psychological damage. This article explores the role of young people’s armed group experience during the Nepal People’s War, compared with post-conflict stressors, in shaping intra-psychic impact and distress, and which processes enable well-being and resilient functioning. Findings are reported from an 18-month clinical ethnography of a cohort of 17 Nepalese young subjects, where participant-observation methods were used to explore their daily lives after exiting the armed group and follow-up research conducted six years later. The findings highlighted limited evidence for on-going intra-psychic impact and distress related directly to their armed group experience; when such distress occurred, it appeared to be generated more by the structural violence of their environments. The key constituents determining their well-being included: a sense of closeness through emotional connectedness with their family, ideological proximity with the values of the armed group, closeness in their bond with the community, and the social-emotional-economic capital available to them to navigate the harsh structural constraints of post-conflict life. These data further challenge the prevailing assumption that this war experience inevitably leads to psychological damage, and the article argues that structural violence often plays a predominant role in cases where psychological distress does arise.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Life after armed group involvement in Nepal: A clinical ethnography of psychological well-being of former “child soldiers” over time |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1177/1363461519850338 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1177/1363461519850338 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work |
| Keywords: | armed conflict, child soldiers, clinical ethnography, Nepal, resilience |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10083830 |
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