Africa's child soldiers shellshocked like World War I troops: study

0 Comments | AFP, March, 2004

PARIS (AFP) — Former child soldiers suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, the ailment once known among World War I troops as "shell shock," according to a study.

Several hundred youngsters who had been abducted by the notoriously brutal Ugandan rebel group, the Lord's Resistance's Army (LRA), were interviewed for the study, one of the few pieces of research to scientifically analyse the experiences and mental health of child soldiers.

Seventy-seven percent of the interviewees had seen someone being killed; 39 percent had to kill someone themselves. Six percent had seen their own father, mother, brother or sister being killed. Two percent had had to kill their own father, brother or another relative.

More than a third of the girls had been sexually...