The contemporary society has a lot of prevalence to the acts of terrorism and war. The evolution of weaponry throughout history has brought its accuracy, efficiency, and power to rise hence leading to more devastation and loss of life. When such effects have occurred, children are always overlooked as victims of the war and violence. Across the globe, millions of children are exposed to violence in many forms, which most of the time result in them developing traumatic stress or related reactions. These reactions and effects can be understood best from the perspective of social, cognitive, and emotional development. This is because children exhibit different response to the stress of violence concerning their level of development.
Moreover, the acts of terrorism and war have a multi-tiered torrent of adverse events endangering life. These results include loss of loved ones, destruction of the educational structure, displacement, and the sudden change in the daily routine and the values of the community. The many challenges, losses, and distresses have effects on the minds, brains, and bodies of the children. This paper emphasizes on the various psychological effects that exposure to war can have on children. It focuses on the research that has been carried out on childhood traumatic stress by reviewing many kinds of literature in different fields dealing with psychology.
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Introduction
According to The Trauma and Mental Health Report (2013), eighteen million children are growing in the face of the violence of war. As a result of armed conflict, the past decade saw over two million children dead, six million were displaced, more than one million becoming separated from their parents or guardians, and twenty million becoming homeless. When Graca Machel released a UN report called “The Impact of War on Children” in 1996, international attention was drawn to the topic with scholars and legislators picking it up mostly.
The recommendations that the report made became the guiding principles in the helping of children affected by war. Since then, there has been advancement by the international community in solving issues of displacement, security, and human rights. However, less effort has been put to address the problems of psychological and vocational needs of the children in these areas ( Thabet & Vostanis, 2000) . As common with the war veterans who tell of the sounds, images and smells that haunt them after an operation, it is imperative to analyze the psychological effects the acts of violence have on the children.
Literature Review
The veterans talk about the flashbacks, nightmares, and sessions of grief that makes them crippled (Thomas et al., 2010). These feelings can be said to be experienced by children as well. When living in terrorized, violent environments, they experience horrors like the death of their parents, friends, neighbors, and siblings; the destruction of their homes; torture; shells and bomb stresses; and many more. These make many children make decisions that would be critical for their survival and include hiding under remains of the deceased, to kill or get killed. These experiences often leave them with the feelings that they would die soon (Dyregrov et al., 2002).
Very few human tragedies elude sympathy more deeply than the sight of children suffering during the war and the other frequent increase of epidemics of violence across the globe. Previously, wars were only between soldiers and were fought in open ground (Galea et al., 2005). However, currently, villages, cities, towns, and homes have become the new battlegrounds, more than ever before. While this happens, the children are caught in the crossfire. When people become witnesses or victims of war and terrorism, powerful emotions are stirred which can live with the individual for life.
Falling witness or victim to acts of war and terrorism provokes an array of powerful human emotions. Irrespective of the specific features of any single war or act of terrorism, the circumstances of the events by definition involve pain, destruction, and death (Khamis, 2012). The physical losses can be replaced or reconstructed with the sorrows and pain accompanying them gradually reducing. However, the psychological scars (the horrifying images and memories and the trauma) do not usually heal quickly. The survival instincts during the war are perhaps most challenging for the children who are still immature by age and psychology and thus rendering them the most vulnerable to the effects that the inescapable war stressors cause.
Research has shown that the impact of war and terrorism on the psychology are similar to those that are experienced during human initiated and natural disastrous occurrences (Galea et al., 2005). But, the mostly tangled influences of psychosocial, religious, cultural, political and community factors have become to be appreciated as complex variables having a tremendous psychological effect. As of late, very little attention has been drawn to the mental health of the individuals who have been through the experience of war and acts of terrorism.
As a result, the rarity of psychological assistance has given rise to feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, which have resulted in increased episodes of delinquency, conduct problems, and alcohol and drug abuse ( Kingsley, 2017) . These elements have all been attributed to the negative impacts of the society in the long run. When a child is raised in an environment that experiences such violence, deprivation, and suffering, their developmental aspects of childhood are affected by severe measures. In some cases, an individual meets a survivor of war, who has been a victim of the terror and trauma and relive their experiences, hence transmitting their stress to the next generation.
Just as the war veterans who have to endure long-time effects of PTSD for many years, these effects are often being recurred by the occurrence of terrifying events such as acts of terrorism. The attributes of any war or terrorist act (being sudden, dramatic, and unpredictable), has tremendous severe effects at various levels of the social structure including individual, family, and community. The occurrences lead to exposure to trauma-related events, which can become long-term and force an individual to endure. The result is always a marked disruption in the social and contextual fabric in which the person lives (Macksoud & Aber, 1996). Children are most vulnerable to these experiences.
However, entirely a little research has been carried out to investigate the effects of terrorism and war on children. It is from studies done during and after World War II to the ones that document psychological results from the most recent wars that it is evident that experiences of war can impede the mental development of children and their touch with the future life. The last ten years have seen a research body circumscribed to the study and compilation of various works on trauma. Recent acts of violence in Afghanistan, the Balkans, and the Middle East are good examples and provide a glimpse of the array of victims of trauma that are forced to move from their homes and live in refugee camps or exile. The instances in other parts of the globe like South East Asia and South Africa gives an illustration of the war, strife, and trauma many young lives get into contact with too profoundly. The persistence exposure to stressors in the war-prone areas makes the children susceptible to mental illness which put them at risk of developing other vices.
Discussion
The immediate effects of war are the traumatic stress which can have more underhand implications than the expected PTSD ( Razokhi et al., 2006) . The TSD can have an insidious impact on the lives of children and adolescents in many aspects of their growth including prosocial behavior and conduct in school, in the home and community at large (Macksoud & Aber, 1996). The children brought up in war-prone areas are faced with the double threat of growing up and overcoming the devastating traumas and losses. The wars made them be pulled in different directions which interfere with their normal developmental process. They become emotionally stunted and the events they experienced bring more shadows of horror as compared to the children who are not exposed to the stressors in a war zone.
The victims develop uncontrollably, repeated, and unpredictable injuries to their sense of well-being, safety, and bodily integrity. These disruptions to the typical childhood growth trajectories can put into motion a torrent of the impacts on development. Children exposed to war and terrorism often experience repeated, uncontrollable, and unpredictable injuries to their sense of safety, well-being, and bodily integrity. During the period in which children grow, their brains, minds, and bodies change and thus the response to the episodes of violence and war also depend on age and the level of development. The type of stressors also has an effect on the level of trauma that the children experience.
Acute emotional and behavioral effects
Research has indicated that despite the children exhibiting few psychological reactions in their response to exposure to war and acts of terrorism (like bombing), an alteration occurs with the increased proximity to the impact zone, as well as the severity and intensity of the exposure. In other words, the children who are closer to the point of attack experience a high degree of traumatic reactions than those far from the location (Macksoud & Aber, 1996). The same hypothesis can be said to be true for the children who are exposed to acts of terror experiencing acute emotional and behavioral effects as compared to those who are not exposed. Studies have shown that those children exposed to chemical attacks showed symptoms of traumatic impacts several months afterward. Some of the immediate implications for the psychological development of the victims include anxiety, depression, irritability, and edginess.
In an interview with a group of children from Iraq who were caught up in the bombing of AL-Ameriyah shelter in 1991, Dyregrov et al. (2002) found traces of PTSD. The event was one of the worst attacks on the Iraqi soils targeting civilians. Of the group interviewed (94 individuals), about 80 percent showed the symptoms of posttraumatic stress. Also, most of them experienced episodes of depression and anxiety and remained afraid due to the effect of losing other family members. In another study on Palestinian children, about 73 percent of 6-11 years old were reported to have PTSD symptoms of at least mild intensity while and 41 percent showed severe levels of the condition. Other researchers have indicated that 14 percent of school-going individuals in Iraq who have been exposed to war-induced stressors met the PTSD criteria with both partial and full PTSD ( Razokhi et al., 2006) .
Long-Term Effects
With all the concentration being made in the short term effects of war exposure to the children, very little research is put to the study of long-term impacts on the global scale(Galea et al., 2005). Much of this is due to the changing dynamics in the growth and psychological development of the young people. In research on children in the Gaza strip, Thabet and Vostanis (2000) first found that the children met the criteria for the PTSD immediately after the war. However, they found out that the rate of symptoms for the condition reduced by 10 percent after a year of peace intervention. Despite the fact that the initial exposure to war-related trauma may be constrained in time and space, there is a broad array of subordinate stressors which continue to affect the children and their families after the war. These include loss and separation from loved ones, poverty, social disruption, illness, malnutrition, and cultural deprivation ( Thabet & Vostanis, 2004) .
In a survey of a sample of school going children who were previously exposed to war about four years later found out that most of them still lived in impoverished environments. In such communities, the compromised nature of the society leads to more exposure to stressors which manifest as dangerous and unhealthy conditions including overcrowded settings, unsafe playgrounds and lack of access to playing fields. Most of them had feelings of insecurity in the streets, had problems with learning, and became ill frequently.
Additional studies on Lebanese children about 43 percent were found to experience posttraumatic stress symptoms even after ten years of exposure to the war (Macksoud & Aber, 1996). However, in some instance, the children have exhibited positive responses to the intervention processes to cope with the trauma.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the psychological and biological effect of the war-related traumas is directly proportional to the severity, impact, and the duration of the stressors on the integrity of the body. Some factors also include the strength of stress response system of the individual and the effort to help them cope. When the children are initially exposed to the events of war and acts of terrorism, they feel anxious, highly irritated, and scared and this can lead to more severe symptoms of PTSD.
However, despite the many pieces of evidence that the exposure to war can bring high levels of stress and the development of symptoms of PTSD, psychological researchers have not studied the effects on the children in the Middle East (Alhasnawi et al., 2009).. This calls for action into the recognition of these children as a vast number of the school going children have been exposed to war, for instance in Iraq. WHO estimates the number of children in need of clinical assistance to be half a million. In the 5.7 million children of school-going age in Iraq, it has been estimated that 10 percent could be in dire need of psychological assistance (psychotherapy) (Alhasnawi et al., 2009).
An essential question is whether the exposure inescapably results to the descent of mental health or whether the victims develop some form of resilience and coping. For instance, an optimistic argument is that due to their continuous exposure to the stressors, children may advance resilience and deal in one way or the other to the stressful occurrences. This comes about through the form of “psychological immunization ( Okasha & Elkholy, 2012) .” But, such a pure disposition is highly questionable.
References
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