{"id":29175,"date":"2020-07-02T21:25:30","date_gmt":"2020-07-02T15:55:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kashmir.today\/?p=29175"},"modified":"2020-07-02T21:25:30","modified_gmt":"2020-07-02T15:55:30","slug":"children-in-kashmir-valley-vulnerable-to-ongoing-trauma-say-doctor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/?p=29175","title":{"rendered":"Children in Kashmir valley vulnerable to ongoing trauma, say doctors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

New video of three-year-old boy shows him describing the sequence of events leading to the killing of his grandfather<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Mental health professionals in the Kashmir valley have warned of an \u201cepidemic of psychological disorders\u201d among the children exposed to \u201crare, complex, ongoing trauma\u201d due to the prolonged conflict in the region, as a new video of a three-year-old boy showed him describing the sequence of events leading to the killing of his grandfather before his eyes in north Kashmir\u2019s Sopore on Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

The Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences-Kashmir (IMHANS-K) on Thursday began monitoring the behaviour of the three-year-old child from Srinagar\u2019s HMT area, a process that is expected to continue for the next six weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe will monitor how the child will heal from the traumatic experience. Any disturbing behavioural pattern would require management by mental health experts,\u201d Dr. Syed Karrar, paediatric neuropsychiatrist at IMHANS-K, told The Hindu<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Highly disturbing\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Describing the images, where the child was seen sitting on the body of his grandfather, and the latest video of the incident \u201chighly disturbing\u201d, Dr. Karrar said, \u201cChildren at this age may not have an idea of the permanence of death but they find it hard to extract the trauma, unlike older children and adults. In fact, the traumatic experience may manifest differently.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What worries mental health professionals in the Valley is the danger of the affected children reliving these experiences for many years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cEarly childhood (0-6 years) traumatic experiences have immense impact on psychological well-being. They have more potential to impact the development of brain structures,\u201d Dr. Karrar said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such images may have already become a cue for conflict-affected children to experience \u201cvicarious trauma\u201d, he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Children in south Kashmir<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

IMHANS-K has already seen around 200 mental trauma cases among children in the past 12 months, which were marred by frequent crackdowns by security forces, encounters and funerals in J&K.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Of the 200 cases, according to the IMHANS-K data, 65-70% of the affected children were from south Kashmir and around 80% belonged to pre-adolescence and early adolescence age groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cMany children from south Kashmir talked about the presence of security personnel as a trigger for anxiety, irritability and anger. Many were having flashbacks, inducing episodic sightings of trauma, fright, scary dreams and sleep disorders,\u201d Dr. Karrar said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Doctors said children in south Kashmir cannot be categorised as \u201cclassic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)\u201d. \u201cIn Kashmir\u2019s case, trauma is an ongoing experience, from one episode to another. It\u2019s a complex trauma peculiar to Kashmir, unlike the clinical acute or chronic trauma,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

There were chances of \u201cmaladaptive coping\u201d among such children. \u201cThe developmental trajectory of such children gets affected as a consequence, and it may lead to depression and drug abuse,\u201d doctors at IMHANS-K warned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

With inputs from The Hindu<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New video of three-year-old boy shows him describing the sequence of events leading to the killing of his grandfather Mental health professionals in the Kashmir valley have warned of an \u201cepidemic of psychological disorders\u201d among the children exposed to \u201crare, complex, ongoing trauma\u201d due to the prolonged conflict in the region, as a new video […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18547,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-union-territory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}