PTSD among Children and Adolescents in the Arab World

Adversities of war have long been related to mental disorders. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a syndrome referring to the constellation of symptoms experienced by a subset of traumatized individuals, has been extensively associated with war. The rates of PTSD among the children and adolescents in the Arabic countries inflicted by war and conflict have reached alarming numbers. As much as PTSD rates vary among different populations, as much as those rates are homogeneous among these Arabic countries ranging between 35-50%. Adolescence is considered a vulnerable stage since it is a transition period between childhood and adulthood with a great deal of psychosocial component shaped by those traumatic experiences. Nonetheless, these worrying numbers raise several questions that need to be answered concerning reliability of previous results, the effect of such disorders on the future of the nation, the mechanism parents’ mental state influences their children, the significance behind highlighting PTSD, and finally the methods to deal with PTSD in these populations. The aim of this review is to investigate PTSD in the Arab world since many of the inciting traumatic events, especially wars, have been experienced by several Arab populations. The review will compare the rates of PTSD in these Arab countries with global rates to deduce the effect of wars and conflicts on the development of PTSD.