Psycho-social support needed for those traumatized

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Uganda: Trauma Needs Serious Address By the Government


Okot B. Kasozi

15 August 2010
Just like it took ages for HIV/Aids to be understood as a reality in Uganda, it has even taken more years for war trauma and post-traumatic stress reactions and disorders to be understood as another terror amidst us that many people are grappling with.

The recent bomb blasts in Kampala left many people traumatised. When I took a quick survey around Gulu District observing and interviewing war affected persons, I realised that the bomb blasts triggered re-traumatisation. Their memories the violent period and displacement in northern Uganda are still vivid. Some told me that the phobia that they are experiencing now has much more energy than that of the past when they were living under the bondage of the LRA.

I think this is basically because the war-affected people are still in the healing processes of getting to terms with the impact of the violent experiences. The interviewees were obsessed with thinking that overnight a similar bomb blast or LRA would terrorise them.

Others told me that they are restless and cannot sleep because they are vigilantly waiting to either escape or confront what may come. Nightmares, paranoia, flashbacks, fights, worries and self destructive behaviours like alcohol and drug abuse, isolation, avoidance became eminent among the community interviewed.

Most of the agencies providing psychosocial counselling and other forms of support in Gulu have closed their programmes because donors are now interested in post conflict development. I think there is an urgent need to analyse the implications and relationships between unhealed war trauma and post-conflict development.

Trauma is not madness the way many people think. It is a normal reaction to abnormal life threatening event(s). Its impact may be acute or even long lasting depending on factors including but not limited to; sequence of the event, individual resilience, psychological support and treatment, social support systems and services such as rehabilitation. We even do not have a psychosocial rehabilitation programme for military combatants and ex-combatants yet they have been exposed to life threatening events in Uganda, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Central African Republic and DR Congo. Instead, we often times blame them for alcoholism, drug abuse, violence and immorality.

I like Democratic Party President Nobert Mao's manifesto entitled Healing the nation. I think healing should be the priority of Uganda now because the entire country is engulfed in an array of disastrous social issues and problems including but not limited to armed conflict, political terror, trauma, divisionism and other forms of injustices.

All these need healing psychologically, socially, politically, economically and spiritually if we are to have a peaceful Uganda where nationals understand and accommodate/tolerate the differences that exist.

This will even help in achieving President Museveni's ideology of Prosperity-for-All otherwise the nation is likely to become sick and wild. The post-war initiatives should take all the above in close consideration and work towards addressing the impacts and the root causes of armed conflicts in Uganda. Practitioners these days are trying to be creative and idealistic, unfortunately the beauty ends in the powerful speeches they make, interesting reports, and workshops with minimum efforts for understanding the current crippling and emerging issues in depth and broadly, hence actual implementation suffers resultant national outcry.

Mr Kasozi is a senior psychosocial research officer, Refugee Law Project - Gulu.