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Iraqis Bear Mental Scars From Wars

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The New York Times

Published: March 8, 2009

BAGHDAD - Only when the guns fall silent does the extent of damage wrought by conflict become visible.

So in Iraq, only as security improves are the full effects the violence has had on the Iraqi people emerging.

Two studies released this weekend, one on mental health and the other on the status of women, paint a sobering portrait of the enormous difficulties that lie ahead as the country tries to recover from years of war and state-sponsored terrorism under Saddam Hussein and the more recent sectarian and ethnic strife that followed the U.S. invasion.

In the mental health study, released Saturday, the Iraqi government and the World Health Organization surveyed 4,332 Iraqis older than 18 and found that 17 percent suffered from mental disorders, with depression, phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety among the most common.

The sense of desperation was so severe that among those who had mental health issues, nearly 70 percent said they had contemplated suicide. The psychiatrists and psychologists who carried out the survey in 2006 to 2007 said that they were surprised that the percentages were not higher given the levels of violence and trauma, and they hypothesized that Iraqis had developed defenses to protect themselves.

"Iraqi society has suffered for nearly 50 years from difficult circumstances, but gradually people seem to have become accustomed to enduring hard experiences," said Abdul al-Monaf al-Jadiry, a psychiatrist at Amman University in Jordan who supervised the study for the WHO.

The study found that women were particularly vulnerable to mental illness. About 14 percent of men suffered from mental health problems while 19 percent of women did. A higher proportion of women than men were found to suffer from severe depression, phobias and anxiety.

The higher levels of stress and mental illness among women, common in many post-conflict societies, may be even higher in Iraq because of the long period of war, according to a study to be released today by the nonprofit research group Oxfam and Amal, an Iraqi nonprofit group that concentrates on issues of concern to women.

Women have seen their circumstances worsen during the past two years, according to the study, which surveyed 1,700 women.

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