**4.3 Means**

164 Post Traumatic Stress Disorders in a Global Context

At that time, there were instances of insecurity in the area and armed bands were still

At the same time, in these villages, there was no health center, and the people's somatic problems were difficult to solve (people had to go either to *Guiglo* or to *Toulepleu*); finally the NGO had to hire a male nurse. Schools were closed down and teachers had not come back.

The traces of the war were visible everywhere: houses destroyed, walls riddled with bullet impacts, faces mirroring unspeakable suffering; misery and poverty seemed to be the daily

In such a situation, the implementation of this far-reaching project that consisted in rebuilding human lives, in giving back a meaning to life and to raising children psychically by healing their invisible wounds named traumas, proved to be an arduous but inspiring task. We needed to face a huge undertaking, that of children requesting care, not always psychic, but often somatic, that of parents for whom we were all doctors and who were begging for assistance, that of participants who were most of the time overworked, psychically suffering sometimes from the burden of the task, under the tough conditions of the mission. The question was to bring answers, a little satisfying to everybody and to each

The implementation of such a project required a methodology with a clear-cut description, feasible and doable but at the same time flexible enough to adapt to unforeseen field events

The population in this project comprised of two groups: child soldiers or those associated with the battle and the untrained field assistants to tackle the issues of psychological consequences of traumatic stress (10 NGO "Social workers" and 10 organizers from the

The structure, which organized the field activities, had listed 500 children, but, finally 400 were recruited into the project. The sample retained for the study of psychopathological disorders was made up of 345 children broken down as follows: 93 children from *Kaadé,* 80

Local NGO workers and workers from the village community, many of whom had no experience, assisted children with psychic suffering. Most local agents were either veterans or inhabitants of the village who had lived the events themselves and who had not been assisted psychologically. As for the local agents, they were condemned to live with permanent anguish, in the midst of the villagers under precarious sanitary and security

an initial assessment phase before intervention, with an initial assessment of the psychopathological situation of child soldiers and a definition of the intervention to be taken

The project, which took two years to complete, progressed through many phases:

from *Béoué*, 118 from *Ké-Bouébo*, 67 from *Péhé* and 67 from *Pantrokin.*

operating in spite of the program of disarmament set up by the Government.

Some villages had no electricity and no telephone.

in order to let us plan our actions on a daily basis.

companion of the population.

one.

**4. Methodology** 

**4.1 Population** 

conditions.

**4.2 The project itself** 

for social reintegration of those children;

village community).

We set up a data bank in order to study the psychopathological characteristics of the former child soldiers.

The collected data concerned the socio demographic (sex, age) and psychological characteristics (sexual activity, symptoms). This data gave us the opportunity to gather indicators to better plan our actions.

We asked for educational and playing equipment: balls, toys, pencils and felt-tip pens, building in games, paint and drugs: haloperidol, chlorpromazin, levomepromazin, and trihexyphenidyl (an antiparkinsonian) to palliate the side effects of neuroleptics.
