Child Mental Health, Psychosocial Well-Being and Resilience in Afghanistan: A Review and Future Directions

The impact of war on child and adolescent mental health is an issue that sits high on the global public health agenda, especially where it concerns young people living in low-income countries (Patel, Flisher, Hetrick, & McGorry, 2007) and conflict zones (Morris, van Ommeren, Belfer, Saxena, & Saraceno, 2007). One key debate in the literature on ‘conflict and child health’ focuses on the relative importance of exposure to different kinds of violence (Panter-Brick, Goodman, Tol, & Eggerman, 2011): are mental health outcomes primarily driven by war-related trauma, family-level violence and/or structural barriers taking the form of institutional, social and economic stressors? Of course, a protracted war exacerbates poverty, weakens social institutions, drives poor health and often increases social and economic inequalities. But such a macro-level view of the consequences of war does not necessarily help to understand the everyday experiences, emotional lives and social realities of children in conflict zones. It is essential for research to carefully assess the main drivers of child and adolescent mental health, in order to understand which cluster of childhood adversities has the greatest impact, to reach specific insights that have both local and global significance and to underscore which interventions might be most effective.