Abstract
The literature on resilience in children affected by armed conflict is limited by (a) a lack of longitudinal research designs, (b) limited knowledge on transactional processes, (c) sparse findings across diverse sociocultural settings, and (d) poor theoretical development. This chapter describes four recent research projects that were aimed at overcoming some of these limitations. First, we report the findings of a longitudinal study of former child soldiers in Sierra Leone that examined risk and protective processes in psychosocial adjustment and social reintegration. Second, we describe how variables at different ecological levels contributed to outcomes on a measure of positive psychosocial well-being, developed in a participatory way with former child soldiers in Nepal. Third, we highlight the role that single-case studies can play in the development of theory regarding treatment processes, by presenting a study with children affected by armed conflict in Burundi and Sudan. Finally, we describe a study that examined mediators and moderators of intervention effects in a cluster randomized trial of a school-based intervention with children in Indonesia. These examples are meant as an illustration of how advances in longitudinal and multilevel statistics, combined with attention to theory development and a participatory context-sensitive approach, may improve understanding of the complexity of resilience of children in areas of armed conflict.
In the previous chapter, we outlined an ecological resilience approach to promoting mental health and psychosocial well-being in children affected by political violence. Subsequently, we reviewed empirical findings on resilience in this population in light of this theoretical framework. The current chapter aims to note major limitations of current relevant knowledge on ecological resilience and describe four recent research efforts that attempted to address some of these limitations.
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Tol, W.A., Jordans, M.J.D., Kohrt, B.A., Betancourt, T.S., Komproe, I.H. (2013). Promoting Mental Health and Psychosocial Well-Being in Children Affected by Political Violence: Part II—Expanding the Evidence Base. In: Fernando, C., Ferrari, M. (eds) Handbook of Resilience in Children of War. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6375-7_3
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