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Background : The study examines the effectiveness of both neurofeedback and motor-imagery brain-computer interface (BCI) training, which promotes self-regulation of brain activity, using low-cost electroencephalography (EEG)-based wearable neurotechnology outside a clinical setting, as a potential treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in Rwanda. Methods : Participants received training/treatment sessions along with a pre- and post- intervention clinical assessment, (N = 29; control n = 9, neurofeedback (NF, 7 sessions) n = 10, and motor-imagery (MI, 6 sessions) n = 10). Feedback was presented visually via a game. Participants were asked to regulate (NF) or intentionally modulate (MI) brain activity to affect/control the game. Results : The NF group demonstrated an increase in resting-state alpha (8-12Hz) bandpower following individual training sessions, termed alpha ‘rebound’ (Pz channel, p = 0.025, all channels, p = 0.024), consistent with previous research findings. This alpha ‘rebound’, unobserved in the BCI group, produced a clinically relevant reduction in symptom severity in NF group, as revealed in four of seven clinical outcome measures: PCL-5 (p = 0.005), PTSD screen (p = 0.005), HTQ (p = 0.005), and CD-RISC (p = 0.041). Limitations : Data collection took place in environments that posed difficulties in controlling environmental factors. Nevertheless, this limitation improves ecological validity, as neurotechnology treatments must be deployable outside controlled environments, to be a feasible technological treatment. Conclusions : The study produced the first evidence to support low-cost, neurotechnological solution for neurofeedback as an effective treatment of PTSD for victims of acute trauma in conflict zones in a developing country.

We aimed to investigate the link between mothers' posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and their adult offspring's attitudes toward reconciliation and psychopathology among survivors of the 1994 genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi in Rwanda. We also sought to examine whether parenting styles mediate the relationship between mothers' PTSD symptoms and their adult offspring's psychopathology, if any.Mother-child dyads (Adult offspring of mothers who suffered from more severe PTSD symptoms had less favorable attitudes toward reconciliation, even after controlling for their own PTSD symptoms. Mothers' PTSD symptoms were not associated with their adult offspring's PTSD or depression symptoms. In addition, mothers' PTSD symptoms did not predict their parenting styles.These results suggest that the mental health of survivors of mass violence has repercussions on the intergroup attitudes of the following generation. This study has practical implications for sustainable peacebuilding in postconflict societies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

This study sought to examine the extent to which age at first substance use contributes to later addiction severity and how PTSD affects their relationships. The study enrolled 315 patients from tertiary addiction services in Rwanda. The participants’ mean age at first substance use was 18.64 years (SD = 6.1) old. Age at first substance use had a significant effect (β = − 0.130, p = .013) on later addiction severity. PTSD showed significant association with later addiction severity (β = 0.363; p =

Objective We tested the psychological correlates of the Gacaca tribunals, a massive program of transitional justice put in place by the Rwandan government following the 1994 genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi. Method The sample consisted of 679 Rwandese participants, among which 373 (55%) were survivors of the genocide. We contrasted three groups of participants: (1) those who had never attended the Gacaca (N = 229), the control group, (2) those who had attended without testifying (N = 275), the attendance group, and (3) those who had attended and testified (N = 120), the testimony group. In the analyses, we controlled for the level of genocide-related negative consequences that participants reported. Results The attendance group presented lower levels of PTSD and depression symptoms than both the control and testimony groups. Both attendance and testimony groups had more positive opinions of the Gacaca and higher openness to reconciliation than the control group. Conclusions contrary to what has been reported in two previous studies, participation in the Gacaca was not, in our data, negatively related to mental health or to social cohesion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

BACKGROUND: The 1994 genocide against Tutsi resulted in a massive death toll that reached one million people. Despite the tremendous efforts made to mitigate the adverse effects of the genocide, a substantial burden of mental health disorders still exists including the notably high prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among genocide survivors. However, a synthesized model of PTSD vulnerability in this population is currently lacking. METHODS: A meta-analysis of 19 original research studies that reported PTSD prevalence (n= 12,610). Medline-PubMed and Science.gov were key search engines. Random-Effects Model (k = 19; taû2 estimator: DL) was applied. Data extraction, synthesis, and meta-analysis were carried out using R. RESULTS: The total of 2957 out of 11746 individuals suffered from PTSD. The summary proportion is 25 % (95% CI=0.16,0.36). The taû2 is 0.06 (95% CI=0.03,0.14) in the absence of subgroups, and the Q-statistic is 2827.65 (p

Research increasingly shows links between trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress symptoms, and cognitive functioning. We know relatively little about the long-term cognitive correlates of exposure to trauma, especially in civilian populations exposed to war and political violence. Objective Our goal was to examined short-term memory (STM) and executive function 20 years after the 1994 genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda. We hypothesized that performance on these tasks would be negatively related to trauma exposure and to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Method In two studies, 470 Rwandan participants answered questionnaires measuring the severity of experiences that occurred during the 1994 genocide and current levels of PTSD symptoms. In both studies, we tested STM using a forward digit span task. In the second study, we also measured executive function using a semantic fluency task. Results There were modest but significant negative links between the severity of experiences during the genocide and STM function more than 20 years after. Current levels of PTSD symptoms were also related to STM and executive function. Conclusions This study reveals the important link between exposure to highly emotional events and cognitive function and highlights the need to attend not only to the mental health but also to the cognitive health of populations exposed to political violence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

This paper originates from research carried out by an international team of university professors interested in protective factors promoting the resilience of graduate students, in particular regarding the student-supervisor relationship. Following a literature review on the subject, the paper presents the resilience factors affecting the student and those relating to the supervisor. The main factors that appear to promote the resilience of graduate students are individual, family and environmental protective factors (as gender, temperament, cultural background, personal history of schooling, motivation, family support, being childless, wealth of the social support network, means offered by the supervisor and the university). For the supervisor, the main protective factors appear to be individual (experience, style and role assumed towards the student, support the student’s empowerment as his/her schooling progresses). The reciprocal adjustment throughout the studies between the supervisor and the student appears essential to promote their tuning for the resilience and the success in the graduate studies.

Previous research shows that listening to pleasant, stimulating and familiar music is likely to improve working memory performance. The benefits of music on cognition have been widely studied in Western populations, but not in other cultures. The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of music on working memory in a non-Western sociocultural context: Rwanda. One hundred and nineteen participants were randomly assigned to a control group (short story) or one of four different musical conditions varying on two dimensions: arousal (relaxing, stimulating) and cultural origin (Western, Rwandan). Working memory was measured using a behavioral task, the n-back paradigm, before and after listening to music (or the short story in the control condition). Unlike in previous studies with Western samples, our results with this Rwandan sample did not show any positive effect of familiar, pleasant and stimulating music on working memory. Performance on the n-back task generally improved from pre to post, in all conditions, but this improvement was less important in participants who listened to familiar Rwandan music compared to those who listened to unfamiliar Western music or to a short story. The study highlights the importance of considering the sociocultural context in research examining the impact of music on cognition. Although different aspects of music are considered universal, there may be cultural differences that limit the generalization of certain effects of music on cognition or that modulate the characteristics that favor its beneficial impact.

This study aims to explore the pathways to self-adjustment following institutionalisation from the children’s perspectives. One focus group discussion was conducted with 37 institutionalised children aged 9 to 15 in each of 5 selected residential homes for children in Rwanda. Data analysis was based on abbreviated version of grounded theory methodology. Findings show that a child is more likely to adopt a “negative pathway” to rendering children orphans i.e. orphanization. Negative pathway subsumes destructive, pessimistic, and distrustful attributes to self-adjustment.

Background: A number of studies have investigated transgenerational effects of parental post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and its repercussions for offspring. Few studies however, have looked at this issue in the African context. Methods: The present study addresses this gap by utilizing a Pearson correlation matrix to investigate symptom severity within the three Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV (DSM-IV) PTSD symptom domains in mothers exposed to the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda (n=25) and offspring (n=25), and an ethnically matched set of controls (n=50) who were outside of Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. All mothers were pregnant with the offspring included in the study during the time of the genocide. Results: Total PTS score was significantly (pNR3C1) locus, an important stress modulating gene, and PTSD symptom domains, finding an association between DNA methylation and re-experiencing among genocide-exposed mothers that exceeded any other observed associations by approximately two-fold. Conclusions: This is the first report, to our knowledge, of a symptom-based analysis of transgenerational transmission of PTSD in sub-Saharan Africa. These findings can be leveraged to inform further mechanistic and treatment research for PTSD.

International audience; With this work, we intended to draw a cognitive portrait of openness to reconciliation. No study had yet examined the potential contribution of high‐level cognitive functioning, in addition to psychological health, to explaining attitudes towards reconciliation in societies exposed to major trauma such as post‐genocide Rwanda. We measured the contribution of general cognitive capacity, analytical thinking, and subjective judgements. Our results show that higher cognitive capacity is not associated with greater openness to reconciliation. On the other hand, proneness to think analytically about the genocide predicts more favorable attitudes towards reconciliation. The latter effect is associated with more tempered judgements about retrospective facts (e.g., number of genocide perpetrators) and prospective events (e.g., risk of genocide reoccurrence). This work establishes the importance of cognitive functioning in the aftermath of political violence: A better understanding of the influence of information processing on openness to reconciliation may help improve reconciliation policies and contribute to reducing risks of conflict reoccurrence.

Lors d’une recherche portant sur les apports et les limites des rituels de deuil post-génocide dans la reconstruction psychique des survivants, nous avons travaillé avec un groupe de veuves rescapées qui s’est dénommé : « groupe de guérison des blessures ». Une blessure qu’elles ont tenté de traiter est celle de la disparition des leurs et leur « enterrement dans le ventre », en l’absence des corps et dans l’attente d’accomplir les rites funéraires. Leurs témoignages nous ont conduits à l’hypothèse que les rites funéraires dans le Rwanda postgénocide engagent l’essai de réparer l’espace communautaire et le lien entre les vivants et les morts, de sorte que les morts n’errent pas parmi les vivants et que les vivants ne soient pas des morts vivants. Le groupe paraît avoir joué le rôle média - teur et régulateur traditionnel du ventre (inda) pour les veuves rescapées dans leur rapport vivant et régénérant à la culture. Le travail réalisé par le groupe a ainsi contribué à ce que le mort qui avait été mis au secret en soi, « dans le ventre », en attente d’être retrouvé et reconnu, puisse être pris en charge et enterré dans la dignité [“The wound healing group” research done with widow escapees on mourning rituals and psychic reconstruction after the Rwanda genocide] During research work dealing with the contributions and limitations of post-genocide mourning rituals in the psychic reconstruction of survivors, we worked with a group of widow escapees who referred to themselves as: « the wound healing group ». One wound they have tried to deal with is the disappearance of their loved ones and their « bur - ial in the stomach », in the absence of bodies and in waiting to carry out funeral rites. Their testimonies have led us to the hypothesis that funeral rites in post-genocide Rwanda repre - sent an attempt to repair their community space and the bond between the living and the dead, so the dead don’t wander among the living and the living don’t become living dead. The group appears to have played the traditional mediatory and regulatory role of the stomach (inda) for the widow es - capees in their living and regenerative relationship to their culture. The work the group carried out thus contributed to allowing the dead, « buried in the stomach », in waiting to be found and recognized, to be taken charge of and buried in dignity

Transmission of parental post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to offspring might be explained by transmission of epigenetic processes such as methylation status of the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) gene (NR3C1).We investigated PTSD and depression severity, plasma cortisol, GR and mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) levels, and methylation status of NR3C1 and NR3C2 promoter regions in 25 women exposed to the Tutsi genocide during pregnancy and their children, and 25 women from the same ethnicity, pregnant during the same period but not exposed to the genocide, and their children.Transmission of PTSD to the offspring was associated with transmission of biological alterations of the HPA axis. Mothers exposed to the genocide as well as their children had lower cortisol and GR levels and higher MR levels than non-exposed mothers and their children. Moreover, exposed mothers and their children had higher methylation of the NR3C1 exon 1F than non-exposed groups. Finally, exposed mothers showed higher methylation of CpGs located within the NR3C2 coding sequence than non-exposed mothers.PTSD was associated with NR3C1 epigenetic modifications that were similarly found in the mothers and their offspring, modifications that may underlie the possible transmission of biological alterations of the HPA axis.

Les auteurs abordent les relations entre resilience et culture en presentant les facteurs culturels de protection (domaine encore peu etudie) et en discutant le role des systemes traditionnels de prise en charge – aux plans individuel et collectif/societal – dans le developpement de la resilience. Dans ce contexte, les auteurs presentent le cas d’une adolescente vivant a l’Ile de la Reunion, qui a beneficie d’une prise en charge traditionnelle dont le deroulement est discute en tant que technique de resilience assistee. Sont, aussi, presentes quelques dispositifs utilises pour guerir des societes traumatisees, et quatre operateurs therapeutiques qui faciliteraient la guerison dans ces societes : le temoignage, le pardon, le soutien et la reparation.