The Emergence of Counseling in Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone has endured a turbulent history, including a decadelong civil war and the devastation of Ebola virus disease. Despite the psychological consequences of such events, only limited therapeutic services are available. The authors review mental health services in Sierra Leone and document the emergence of counseling as a profession in the face of challenges. They conclude by highlighting the multiple contributions that professional counselors can make to address critical mental health needs in Sierra Leone.     

From Liverpool to Freetown: West African Witchcraft,Conspiracy and the Occult

In this ethnography I examine the key features of occult discourses among middle-class Sierra Leoneans living in Britain, based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Merseyside and Cheshire between 2001-2002. It is evident that the subjects of this study are quick to engage with the conspiracy-theorising besetting Euro-American popular culture in conveying their anxieties about the civil war, poverty and corruption that have ravaged Sierra Leone, coupled to the institutionalised racism and socio-economic problems that beset the black community in Liverpool. This despair has translated into a general trepidation about West African witchcraft that has become a global metaphor for the malcontents of modernity. In recent years these worries have been added to, fuelled by the heavy responsibility individuals experience to provide financial support and moral guidance to those relatives who have been forced to leave Sierra Leone during the years of civil strife. They are secretly mistrusted by the middle-class Sierra Leoneans living in Liverpool, who worry that their less-well-off relatives malign their good intentions through their accusations of witchcraft.     

Ebola ‘Done Done’—But What Has It Left Behind?

Sierra Leone, a country that has been recovering from a brutal civil war, was in 2014 struck by a new crisis in the Ebola epidemic. This article reports on interviews and repertory grids completed by two groups of people who had been affected by the epidemic: amputee footballers who had lost family members or friends, and burial workers. The interviews and grids are analyzed in terms of the professional constructs of personal construct psychology, highlighting the anxiety, threat, guilt, and shame experienced by the participants; similarities in their construing of the Ebola epidemic and the civil war; and their positive anticipations of the future.     

Rehabilitating civilian victims of war through psychosocial intervention in Sierra Leone

This research assessed an intervention (involving drug therapy and psychoeducational counseling) for war trauma in Sierra Leone. We examine the impact of the intervention on symptoms of post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and indicators of intergroup emotions and attitudes. Civilian war victims were drawn from a rehabilitation program (Intervention, N=50) or a waiting list Control group (N=50). The rehabilitation program combined general psychiatric treatment with additional life skills support. Those in the Intervention group had significantly lower PTSD symptoms and also scored lower on Intergroup Anxiety and Outgroup Blame, than those in Control. The intervention had an indirect effect on PTSD symptoms through Intergroup Anxiety. The reduction in PTSD in the intervention was greater for participants with a stronger identification with Sierra Leone.     

Self-Construing In Former Child Soldiers

This article presents a repertory grid study of young people who had experienced civil war in Sierra Leone, some as child soldiers and others as noncombatants. Unexpected findings included that the former combatants viewed themselves more favorably than did noncombatants. The findings are discussed in terms of individual and social construing processes, drawing on narratives and interview and focus group responses obtained from the participants in the larger investigation of which this study was part. Particular consideration is given to the role of forgiveness.     

Evolution of Family Policies in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone

We examined the development of family policy in post-conflict Sierra Leone. The article begins with a review of the history of family policies in Sierra Leone in the context of the country’s recent turbulence and the challenges faced by the legal system in consistently addressing the needs of family members. We then discuss recent post-conflict government initiatives aimed at supporting and enhancing the well being of Sierra Leonean families. The article concludes with recommendations, for government and nongovernment organizations (international and local), as well as clinicians and researchers, aimed at protecting and promoting the family as an institution in which the needs of both the family unit and its individual members are met.     

Trauma healing in refugee camps in Guinea: a psychosocial program for Liberian and Sierra Leonean survivors of torture and war

From 1999 to 2005, the Minneapolis-based Center for Victims of Torture (CVT) served Liberian and Sierra Leonean survivors of torture and war living in the refugee camps of Guinea. A psychosocial program was developed with 3 main goals: (a) to provide mental health care, (b) to train local refugee counselors, and (c) to raise community awareness about war trauma and mental health. Utilizing paraprofessional counselors under the close, on-site supervision of expatriate clinicians, the treatment model blended elements of Western and indigenous healing. The core component consisted of relationship-based supportive group counseling. Clinical interventions were guided by a 3-stage model of trauma recovery (safety, mourning, reconnection), which was adapted to the realities of the refugee camp setting. Over 4,000 clients were provided with counseling, and an additional 15,000 were provided with other supportive services. Results from follow-up assessments indicated significant reductions in trauma symptoms and increases in measures of daily functioning and social support during and after participation in groups. The treatment model developed in Guinea served as the basis for CVT's ongoing work with survivors in Sierra Leone and Liberia. ((c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).     

Trajectories of externalizing problems among war-affected youth in Sierra Leone: Results from a longitudinal study

Mental health problems are linked to violence exposures such as witnessing or participating in war-related activities. Of particular concern is whether such exposure perpetuates risk of violent behavior. Externalizing problems have received limited attention in research on war-affected youth. Three waves of data (2002–2008) from a prospective longitudinal study in Sierra Leone were used to examine externalizing trajectories in 529 war-affected youth (average age 14.9 at baseline; 25% female). Of four groups, the largest represented a trajectory designated as ‘stable,’ with relatively low levels of externalizing at baseline declining slightly across the time points. Compared to the stable group, the probability of being classified in the ‘deteriorators’ group was greater among those who reported having injured/killed another person during the war and with a history of family abuse and neglect reported at T3. Membership in the ‘improvers’ group was more likely for those with higher family support and was also associated with reporting injuring/killing others during the war. A minority indicated sustained, heightened symptom levels, which was also associated with family abuse and neglect following the war. Our findings demonstrate that both traumatic war experiences and post-war experiences play vital roles in shaping adolescents' trajectories of externalizing over time.     

Conservation of Distance in African Children—The Sex Dimension

This study reviews the literature on the topic of sex dimension as it affects the attainment of the conservation of distance among African children in Sierra Leone. An investigation was done to determine the age at which these children attain conservation. Subjects were primary school children from different parts of the country who ranged from classes (grade levels) II to VII. It was found that the age of conservation was 12 years and that males in the sample performed better than females. This is in line with conclusions drawn from similar studies of African children.     

BRIEF REPORT: PSYCHOLINGUISTIC PERFORMANCE AS AN INDICATOR OF MODERNIZATION

The Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA) was administered to 80 Ss from four cultural systems of varying degrees of modernization in Sierra Leone. Extensive univariate results were reporbed by Karr (1969). This short note indicates the utility of muliivariate analyses. Multiple dis- criminant analysis was applied to the nine ITPA subtests, resulting in two significant discriminsant functions. The first function separated the groups along the hypothesized modernization continuum. The second function in- dicated one way in which bhe hypothesized levels of modernization did not hold up under empirical investigation.     

The politics of humanitarian intervention: a critical analogy of the British response to end the slave trade and the civil war in Sierra Leone

A leading scholar of humanitarian intervention, Brown (2002) Brown, C. 2002. “Humanitarian intervention and international political theory”. In Human rights and military intervention, Edited by: Mosley, A. and Norman, R. 153–69. Aldershot: Ashgale Publishing.  [Google Scholar] refers to British internal politics to satisfy the influential church and other non-conformist libertarian community leaders, and above all ‘undermining Britain's competitors, such as Spain and Portugal, who were still reliant on slave labour to power their economies, as the principal motivation for calls to end the slave trade than any genuine humanitarian concerns of racial equality or global justice’. Drawing on an empirical exploration, this article seeks to draw a parallel between this politics of humanitarian intervention which characterised the abolition movement, albeit rarely recognised in the academic literature, and the British intervention to end the almost 11 year civil war in Sierra Leone. The article concludes with a discussion on the implications of this politics of humanitarian intervention in the reconstruction of post-conflict Sierra Leone.     

Center for Victims of Torture--Guinea 2004-2005 International Mental Health Team: international humanitarian award

Presents the citation for the Center for Victims of Torture--Guinea 2004-2005 International Mental Health Team, who received the International Humanitarian Award "for their outstanding commitment to the healing of torture victims and to educating the world community about torture and war trauma." A brief profile of the Center is presented, as well as the Center's award address, entitled Trauma Healing in Refugee Camps in Guinea: A Psychosocial Program for Liberian and Sierra Leonean Survivors of Torture and War. ((c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).     

Positive fantasies dampen charitable giving when many resources are demanded

Previous research found that positive fantasies about an idealized future yield low energy to pursue the fantasized future. We examined how positive fantasies about the resolution of a crisis (i.e., a lack of pain medication in Sierra Leone, the risk of flooding after Hurricane Irene) influence people's agreement to donate to charitable efforts directed at crisis resolution. In three studies, positive fantasies dampened the likelihood of agreeing to donate a relatively large amount of money, effort, or time, but did not affect the likelihood of agreeing to donate a relatively small amount of these resources. The effect of positive fantasies was mediated by perceiving the donation of larger (but not smaller) amounts of resources as overly demanding. These findings suggest that charitable solicitations requesting small donations might benefit from stimulating positive fantasies in potential donors, but those requesting large donations could be hurt.     

Global hip‐hop identities: Black youth,psychoanalytic action research,and the Moving to the Beat project

The paper presents a psychoanalytically informed analysis of the concept of hip‐hop identity through the lens of a four‐year social action research and documentary film project, titled Moving to the Beat (M2B). The M2B project sought to document and unpack key psychological and social dynamics behind the struggle for a global identity among Black hip‐hop activists in Africa and America. Two groups were formed, one in Portland, Oregon and a second in Freetown, Sierra Leone, with the aim of enlisting hip‐hop as a mode of cross‐cultural dialogue and as a forum for activism. Three key themes are discussed as they emerged as sites of creative conflict through the M2B project: the struggle to establish a progressive identity over against politically and psychologically regressive currents in hip‐hop culture, the search for authenticity in the context of globally manufactured identities, and differing conceptions of rebellion and intergenerational conflict. The paper describes how psychoanalytic theory informed the process of producing the Moving to the Beat documentary film and working through these sites of conflict in negotiating the borders of hip‐hop global identities. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adolescents' views on war and peace in the early phases of the Iraq conflict

Adolescents' views of war and peace were assessed among 209 children aged 10-14 who attended a parochial school or its after-school religious program located in a predominantly middle-class, suburban area within commuting distance of New York City. Findings were compared to those of youth surveyed during other armed conflicts, specifically the Vietnam War, the first Persian Gulf War, and the U.S. military involvement in Latin America. The study took place in early fall 2003, and results were interpreted in light of the social climate and complex realities of post 9/11 in New York State, the Catholic Church's initial opposition to the Iraq conflict, and popular opinion. In spite of differences between the Iraq War and other conflicts, findings are remarkably similar. Although the present group is highly preoccupied with terrorism and nuclear war, even in a time of war, participants show concern for what they perceived as affecting their lives directly, rather than with conventional war. While they believe that President Bush was honest about the war in Iraq and right in sending troops, they do not glorify war. On a theoretical level, they overwhelmingly believe that wars are bad and the majority is optimistic that world peace is possible, though they realize that wars are difficult to prevent, believe that they are sometimes needed, and will occur in the future. Unlike the Catholic group surveyed by Tolley during the Vietnam War, however, participants are not as ready to die for their country, although findings show that, overall, like past groups, more boys tend to be pro-war than are girls and participants' views tend to reflect contemporary public opinions.     

Verdeckte Spuren deutscher Geschichte

Children of the Second World War are considered here as members of the age group born between 1939 and 1945. The development of these children was determined by coping with the early traumatization by war experiences. Many of them were left alone with their traumatization in the post-war period and obtained no support from the generation of the parents who were preoccupied with their own broken lives. As a consequence they have in common a strange split relationship to their own biographies lacking consciousness about the trauma. They became a self-alienated generation. They borrowed their identity from being concerned about others. By this they fulfilled the delegation given by their parents whose own lives were broken down. As long as the identification persisted, the trauma of the war period remained hidden and was transmitted to the next generation, to the children of the war children. When this dynamic can be detected in psychoanalysis and worked through there is a chance to assimilate emotionally this fate and to reach a positive war child identity. This thesis will be demonstrated by a case study.     

Complicitous liability in war

Jeff McMahan has argued against the moral equivalence of combatants (MEC) by developing a liability-based account of killing in warfare. On this account, a combatant is morally liable to be killed only if doing so is an effective means of reducing or eliminating an unjust threat to which that combatant is contributing. Since combatants fighting for a just cause generally do not contribute to unjust threats, they are not morally liable to be killed; thus MEC is mistaken. The problem, however, is that many unjust combatants contribute very little to the war in which they participate—often no more than the typical civilian. Thus either the typical civilian is morally liable to be killed, or many unjust combatants are not morally liable to be killed. That is, the liability based account seems to force us to choose between a version of pacifism, and total war. Seth Lazar has called this “The Responsibility Dilemma”. But I will argue that we can salvage a liability-based account of war—one which rejects MEC—by grounding the moral liability of unjust combatants not only in their individual contributions but also in their complicit participation in that war. On this view, all enlistees, regardless of the degree to which they contribute to an unjust war, are complicitously liable to be killed if it is necessary to avert an unjust threat posed by their side. This collectivized liability based account I develop avoids the Responsibility Dilemma unlike individualized liability-based accounts of the sort developed by McMahan.     

Health Outcomes and Attitudes Toward Female Genital Cutting in a Community-Based Sample of West African Immigrant Women from High-Prevalence Countries in New York City

Female genital cutting (FGC), a deeply rooted cultural practice with high prevalence rates in many West African countries, is considered by many to represent systematic gender-based violence and human rights violation. Although short- and long-term health consequences of FGC have been examined in studies in Africa, the experiences of women who have immigrated to the Western countries such as the United States have remained largely unexplored. We sought to examine prevalence rates of FGC, as well as differences in demographic characteristics, health outcomes, and knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs among West African immigrants. This study employed audio computer-assisted self-interviewing with a community-based sample of 68 women from Gambia, Guinea, Mali, and Sierra Leone living in New York City. The rate of FGC was 68% overall and varied significantly by country, tribe or ethnicity, and marital status. Women with FGC had a significantly higher number of live births and were more likely to report a history of vaginal pain and decreased sexual arousal, but there were no other significant differences in gynecological and obstetric outcomes, sexual functioning, or psychological outcomes. Participants also had similar rates of opposition to FGC, although women with FGC were less likely to assert human rights as a reason to end the practice. Women reported a high level of surprise and unpreparedness for the FGC procedure, and 22% reported that it was done without their parents’ consent. Long-term health consequences of FGC among women who have immigrated remain unclear, although resistance to the practice is overwhelming.     

Just War Theory and the IRA

ABSTRACT The Irish Republican Army (IRA) sometimes claim that their violent actions are sanctioned by traditional just war doctrine. To what extent is this true? To answer this question it is necessary to have a clear grasp of the principles of just war and of the situation in Northern Ireland to which they are to be applied. This is done in the first sections, and it is then argued that just war sanctions some kinds of violence in Northern Ireland but only those of direct self-defence. Violence outside the borders of Northern Ireland or for the sake of Irish Unity is not justifiable. Consequently the IRA must be viewed, in terms of just war theory at any rate, as in principle illegitimate, even though some of their actions are defensible. Finally it is suggested that non-violence, after the pattern of Gandhi, while not required by justice might nevertheless be preferable.