鈥楽hadows into Light鈥�
Newly published by Salem Professor in Global Practice Theresa Betancourt, director of the Research Program on Children and Adversity (RPCA) at the md传媒国产剧 College School of Social Work,听 Shadows into Light: A Generation of Former Child Soldiers Comes of Age鈥攂rings a fresh perspective on her two-decade study of children who were pulled into Sierra Leone鈥檚 bloody 10-year civil war.
Discussing her project as well as general issues related to violence-related trauma among youths, Betancourt also tells the stories of Sahr and Isatu, who were among an estimated 20,000 children forced into combat or servitude in Sierra Leone鈥攁nd how they and other survivors have fared on their long, uncertain road back into society and everyday life.
She talked about Shadows into Light听in a Q&A with md传媒国产剧 College Chronicle Editor Sean Smith.
You鈥檝e published your research in numerous outlets, and it鈥檚 also been covered extensively in the media. Why write a book? 听
After so many years of publishing my research in peer review journals, I felt there needed to be a place to tell the story in a more coherent and in a comprehensive way. Writing this book was my attempt to bring all the many papers over the years into a larger Gestalt: bringing the full story together of how the study came about, its core intentions, how we did it and what we learned into a clearer view.
Shadows into Light describes a study that has now been underway for more than 23 years鈥攆ollowing the lives of male and female former child soldiers in Sierra Leone from the end of its civil conflict in 2002 to the present. Having grown up in a remote part of Alaska, a region haunted by cultural loss and collective trauma that often manifested in high rates of suicide, family violence, and threats to human capital, I wanted to know more about what helped people fight their way back from trauma and begin to rebuild their lives. My core question was: What modifiable factors can help young people recover from their wartime experiences? 听
The book provides rare insights into the ways in which not just personal trauma, but also family and community relationships shape life outcomes and mental health over time. It has been common for many to assume that children who face such extreme war-related trauma are simply 鈥渓ost generations.鈥� But what if changing our ways of thinking and reconsidering our approach to bridging the humanitarian, peacebuilding, and development nexus might allow many of these young people to not just recover, but thrive? It takes all of us to help others get through extreme challenges; we all have a part to play to support children and ensure that they grow and thrive.
The book is meant to have appeal to a broad readership interested in risk and resilience in the lives of children as well as the fields of child development, global public health, psychiatry, social work, law, humanitarian response, and appeal to other human service professionals.
Your work points up some universal questions for the mental health/human services-related field: How to balance the need for professional detachment鈥攐bserving and identifying problems, formulating interventions, checking progress鈥攚ith empathy for the individuals you encounter? How to maintain one鈥檚 own personal equilibrium after witnessing such devastation?
It can be very hard to bear witness to the level of human suffering that those in our study have experienced, but to see individuals who experienced violence and loss firsthand go on to rebuild their lives successfully is an incredible and inspiring phenomenon. In fact, resilient outcomes are more the norm than not in our study.听 In this same manner, our early observational research and findings provided the foundation for intervention development.
It is a truism of our work that the reason that we are engaging in such research is to understand potentially leverageable mechanisms that can be targeted by programs and policies.
The word 鈥渞esilience鈥� appears a lot in your descriptions of your work with child soldiers and similarly traumatized persons. It鈥檚 also used鈥攕ometimes in a critical way鈥攖o talk about young people in otherwise favorable circumstances who struggle with stress, anxiety, and disappointment in their lives. Is there a useful commonality in all this? Can we draw lessons about resilience from Sahr and Isatu?
Indeed, the global situation for youth mental health is increasingly concerning. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated these issues globally, which has led to significant increases in anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation among young people from all backgrounds. According to the World Health Organization 2020 Mental Health Atlas, one in seven adolescents experience mental disorders globally.
In this same manner, I do see lessons learned in our longitudinal research on individuals recovering from extreme trauma that are relevant to everyday mental health challenges faced by young people in higher resource settings. I have come to see resilience as a process, not a trait of individuals.听 Our study reflects how the long-term psychosocial adjustment and social reintegration of young people who have been through some of the worst trauma imaginable is shaped by both individual factors鈥攁ge, gender, violence exposures and individual trauma histories鈥攂ut also by layers of risk and protection operating at the level of the family, peers, the community, and the broader environment. I think there are lessons to be learned here for young people from all backgrounds and our findings call on us to shift a bit how we think about mental health promotion to ensure that we consider how mental health promotion might be layered into every level of a university environment鈥攏ot just individual mental health services, but also mental health promotion campaigns in student associations and at student events and in housing and classroom settings.
Just like the war-affected young people we have worked with globally, students in a high-resource setting can also be supported to build more skills in self-regulation, mindfulness, and coping. In both low- and high-income settings, we should be asking how we might ensure a more 鈥渟aludogenic鈥� or health-promoting ecosystem for young people鈥檚 mental health.
You鈥檝e made a point of mentioning the valuable contributions to RPCA鈥檚 work from people who are from the affected communities you research. Are there replicable models here that could address mental health challenges in our communities?
My team and I are highly motivated and taking action to expand on our research and implementation science initiatives on a wider scale, including in the United States.听 Just as we hire locals and invest in local communities, in the U.S. we have also been able to engage in very exciting community-based participatory research with refugees and forced migrants, training individuals from the lived experience of resettlement to be researchers in their communities as well as co-developing family-based prevention models, carried out by peers who know the language and culture to support newly resettling families in the U.S.
We refer to such activities as 鈥渕utual learning鈥� or 鈥渞eciprocal innovation,鈥� whereby innovations from low-resource settings might help to address health disparities here in the U.S. Given long wait lists and challenges in meeting the language and cultural needs among a diverse array of groups in the U.S., I would love to see more opportunities to allow non-specialists like community health workers and peers trained and supervised to deliver evidence-based mental health promotion interventions. Such investments might help to better overcome mental health disparities and could be a real model of innovation.
Betancourt will discuss Shadows into Light on April 1 at 2 p.m. in the md传媒国产剧 College School of Social Work Library. Registration details will be available through BCSSW at a later date.
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