War in Iraq - the psychological effects

A study of 153 civilians in Iraq* has found that different kinds of warfare can have very different effects on people's chances of developing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Researchers studied three groups of people : some of them lived in Oshnaviyeh, which saw 'low-intensity' conventional warfare, others lived in Rabat which experience 'high-intensity' conventional warfare while the third group lived in Sardasht which suffered from high-intensity conventional warfare and attacks by chemical weapons. They found that 8% of the population of Oshnaviyeh had suffered from PTSD at some point, compared to 31% of people in Rabat and 59% of people in Sardasht. People in Sardasht had a 27 times greater risk of suffering from PTSD than those in Oshnaviyeh and a seven times greater risk of depression. Anxiety symptoms were fifteen times more common. The risks of mental disorders were higher in Rabat than Oshnaviyeh but not by the same order of magnitude suggesting that chemical weapon attacks cause much more damage to people's mental health than conventional warfare.

*The study was into the effects of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, not the two most recent conflicts in Iraq

Journal of the American Medical Association 2006 ; 296: 560-6