Exposures to war-related traumatic events and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms among displaced Darfuri female university students: an exploratory study

doi:10.1186/1471-2458-12-603

BMC Public Health. 2012; 12: 603.

Published online 2012 August 3. doi: 10.1186/1471-2458-12-603

PMCID: PMC3461465

Exposures to war-related traumatic events and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms among displaced Darfuri female university students: an exploratory study

Alia Badri,^1,² Rik Crutzen,¹ and H W Van den Borne¹

¹Department of Health promotion, CAPHRI, School of Public Health and Primary Care, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

²School of Psychology and Pre-School Education, Ahfad University for Women, Omdurman, Sudan

Corresponding author.

Alia Badri: aliabadri/at/hotmail.com; Rik Crutzen: rik.crutzen/at/maastrichtuniversity.nl; H W Van den Borne: b.vdborne/at/maastrichtuniversity.nl

Received March 5, 2012; Accepted July 13, 2012.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Abstract

Background

With the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the displacement of up to three million Darfuris, the increasingly complex and on-going war in Darfur has warranted the need to investigate war-related severity and current mental health levels amongst its civilian population. The purpose of this study is to explore the association between war-related exposures and assess post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms amongst a sample of Darfuri female university students at Ahfad University for Women (AUW) in Omdurman city.

Methods

An exploratory cross-sectional study among a representative sample of Darfuri female university students at AUW (N

123) was conducted in February 2010. Using an adapted version of the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ), war-related exposures and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms were assessed. Means and standard deviations illustrated the experiential severity of war exposure dimensions and PTSD symptom sub-scales, while Pearson correlations tested for the strength of association between dimensions of war exposures and PTSD symptom sub-scales.

Results

Approximately 42

% of the Darfuri participants reported being displaced and 54

% have experienced war-related traumatic exposures either as victims or as witnesses (M

28, SD

14.24, range 0 – 40 events). Also, there was a strong association between the experiential dimension of war-related trauma exposures and the full symptom of PTSD. Moreover, the refugee-specific self-perception of functioning sub-scale within the PTSD measurement scored a mean of 3.2 (SD

.56), well above the 2.0 cut-off.

Conclusions

This study provides evidence for a relationship between traumatic war-related exposures and symptom rates of PTSD among AUW Darfuri female students. Findings are discussed in terms of AUW counseling service improvement.

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