The Emotional Effect of War on People
Written by: Kate Woo
Civil war. A war between citizens of the same country. A battle between brothers and sisters sparked from the conflict driven between them. Civil war takes a toll on people in many ways when they are affected by an extremely violent environment and one example is the effect civil war has on people emotionally. There is of course a person’s mental state, but dive deeper to the depths of human consciousness and the emotional trauma is found, born from a war between people that share the same country they call home. Whether fighting on the front lines or helplessly watching the destruction of a place once called home, individuals that have suffered through war show evidence of emotional trauma through studies, journals of war, and research.
War is hard to predict. One moment it may be a walk in the park, and a moment later there are suddenly tanks rolling down the street. Children rarely are beginning to know what civil war is, and how brothers and sisters of a country can turn on one another, so imagine the devastating impacts the high levels of destruction and violence will have on them. Children's’ brains are still developing and when they are exposed to a violent, war torn environment it has longer lasting effects on them on an emotional level. A study that focused on the civilians of Sierra Leone after the civil war that raged in the torn country for eleven years showed that children with atypical emotional experience demonstrated that childhood exposure to high levels of hostility and threat, biases their perception of emotions. This study, by Frontiers in Psychology examined the effects of exposure to and forced participation in acts of extreme violence on the emotion processing of these young war survivors. 38 former child soldier survivors were tested to assess the participants’ ability to identify four different facial emotion expressions from photographs and movies. Although, their general ability to recognise facial emotions, participants showed a significant response bias in their recognition of sadness to anger. The children tended to attribute negative emotions to facial expressions more than with positive emotions. These findings point to a pervasive long-lasting effect on emotion processing later in life due to childhood exposure to violence. The child soldiers of Sierra Leone show the emotional effects that the civil war had on them and how such trauma follows a person forever.
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After a civil war, civilians and even soldiers may experience an emotional trauma known as survivor's guilt. Survivor’s guilt is the phenomenon that occurs when others around a person suffer or die while the other person stays safe or alive. Although the occurrence of survivor's guilt is unofficial, it can be connected to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which is a mental health condition triggered by the memory of witnessing a distressing or terrifying event. Symptoms include flashbacks, nightmares, and severe anxiety as well as uncontrollable thoughts of the event. It is a common occurrence found in soldiers and war survivors deriving from emotional trauma that stays with them forever. The thought of being alive after so many people, some innocent, died makes one think why they are still alive and what their purpose is after not surviving such a devastating experience. The unknown fact of why some live rather than others is hard to wrap the mind around and leaves war survivors in a rocky emotional state that can last for years and even decades.
Another major emotional effect of war is the massive injuries to soldiers faces that leaves them emotionally unstable. During the devastation of the Great War originating in Europe, many soldiers fought in battlefields charging head on into gunfire and destruction. The trench warfare of World War I produced a higher magnitude of facial casualties than ever before because of the new and heavy use of grenades, mortars, machine guns, and other methods of shooting metal at high velocities. Soldiers described hearing, “a crackle or whistle from a shell, then [feeling] their facial bones explode,” and another compared it to, “a glass bottle [dropping] into a porcelain bathtub.” Jawbones were pulverized on contact and then reduced to sand underneath the skin. These drastic injuries to the face traumatized soldiers and after the war there were little solutions. Most of these soldiers, holes in their faces, or no mouths, or noses, retreated to living in isolation, afraid of going out in public to be scrutinized despite fighting for their country. These soldiers had trouble with their identity emotionally because they did not see themselves in a mirror. Being unable to identify with themselves left many soldiers in a distressed and emotionally unstable state because they couldn’t even live a normal life. Sadly, after released from the safety of the ward housing other soldiers with facial traumas, some of the patients killed themselves. This simply shows that the clash of humanity against humanity using the force of high speed metal and chemicals, result in severe trauma and lasting emotional effects on people. In this case, soldiers suffered emotionally because they were lost when it came to their identity. The battles they fought scarred them physically, but more importantly, emotionally. War leaves a massive imprint on the lives of people afterwards and the impact can be devastating, especially upon an emotional trauma such as losing one's identity.
In conclusion, seen through the cases of child soldiers in Sierra Leone, the guilt of those who live for those that die, and the broken soldiers from the Great War, there are lasting emotional effects on people as a result of war. Emotions are how people feel and think, and war drastically changes the emotional well-being of people in many ways. Guns, cannons, and shells only bring destruction and devastation that affect the lives of millions in many ways, including emotionally. So rather than firing bullets at one another, building walls, and killing, people should shake hands, build bridges, and spread the love that makes us. Human.