We never hear about the post-traumatic stress disorders that Iraqi children are suffering

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.khaleejtimes.ae/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/focusoniraq/2007/March/focusoniraq_March59.xml§ion=focusoniraq&col=

<snip>Big car bomb attacks at Baghdad’s markets often kill children. But even if they are not physically maimed, much of their pain comes from what they see and hear.

Outside Abdul-Muhsin’s office, 9-year-old Ghufran was standing waiting as her father discussed her case.

“I have a headache,” she said.

Ghufran saw an explosion and while not hurt in the blast, she has suffered epileptic fits ever since.

“Whenever she sees the scene of an explosion or hears the sound of a blast or sees people dressed in black, she has an epileptic fit,” Abdul-Muhsin quoted her father as saying.

In 2004, Abdul-Muhsin opened a centre to treat people suffering psychological problems, but he said it was forced to close in 2005 because foreign doctors stopped coming to Iraq and it ran out of money.

He said 70 percent of the children he sees have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

[Jcrowley]

1. K&R n/t

[Karenina]

2. Another.

:kick:

[flaliberal]

3. I work with a lady who lived through the bombings in Germany

as a young girl. She's in her 70's and it still bothers her at times.
Imagine if you were walking to school as a 9-year girl, and when you
got there it was blown up? She tells me stories sometimes, and I think
it helps her, because she gets it out. Her husband doesn't like her to
talk about it, because she gets depressed. She says they would move the
school from house to house, and she liked it when they met at her house,
because everyone was required to bring a piece of wood for heating.
It was the only time her house was warm :-(

The fallout from this war will last for generations both there and here.

[Solly Mack]

4. recommended

[rman]

5. "it's one thing to get a child out of war,

it's another thing to get war out of a child"

(not sure about the exact quote but it's close enough)

http://www.warchild.org/

[Marie26]

6. K&R nt

[NNN0LHI]

7. Thank you guys for recommending this one

It brought tears to my eyes when I read it.

Don

[Hissyspit]

8. Remember "Shock and Awe"?

All the time the great and celebrated (at least among Americans, anyway) air strikes were going on, all I could think was what this was doing to the children who lived in that city. And no mention of it in the television news coverage anywhere. Horrible.

[malaise]

9. Who cares about those

brown people. :sarcasm:

[SoCalDem]

10. Our children will "hear" about it.. Just give it time..

The child of our enemy is the enemy of our child..

[Bonobo]

11. Adults too. How would you like to go shopping in a market in Bagdhad?

So the kids have PTSD, their parents (if they have any) have PTSD, they live amongs filth, sewage, no electricity and have the threat of having their doors kicked down by jack-booted thugs at any time or their cars run over by tanks are gunned down by missing moving checkpoints or if they are too close to an IED and get blamed for it.

[leftchick]

12. Nearly every family with children has stories of nightmares or changed behavior

but it is so much better without Saddam! :sarcasm:

<snip>

Nearly every family with children has stories of nightmares or changed behavior.

"My 6-year-old grandson told me the other day he dreamt that he was walking with his mother near his house when they saw me heading toward them," said Najat al-Azzawi, 55, a retired engineer. "But a masked man came and snatched me."

Nora, the 9-year-old daughter of primary school teacher Wafaa Hamed, said she is afraid of the dark.

"I dream that a thief is running after me holding a big knife. I wake up and my whole body is shivering, crying for Mummy and Daddy," she said.

Nora enjoys watching a program called "Space Toon" on satellite television, but it makes her sad.

"I see kids playing in beautiful gardens and parks and I wish I could play and have fun like them, but I know I can't because we have bombs and bad guys hurt children," she said.