ABSTRACT
The role of child psychiatrists in assisting war victims has increased significantly since World War II. Child and adolescent psychiatrists have been increasingly active in humanitarian responses to wars and political terror in Central America (Arroyo and Eth, 1985), the Middle East (Ahmad, 1992; Apfel and Simon, 1993; Chimienti, Nasr, and Khalifeh, 1989; Klingman, Sagi and Raviv, 1993; Ziv, Kruglanski and Shulman, 1974), Africa (Shaw and Harris, 1994), and the former Yugoslavia (Zivcic, 1993). Humanitarian organizations providing aid in the former Yugoslavia recognized the adolescents' suffering, and psychosocial projects were initiated to assist these victims. As a child psychiatrist working for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), one of these humanitarian non governmental organizations (NGO), I spent most of 1994 in the former Yugoslavia. This paper will provide examples of adolescent victims of ethnic cleansing, briefly describe several psychosocial (mental health) programs, and discuss factors that may have contributed to their success.
