The Lebanon wars have recently (October 1990) witnessed a lull brought about largely by the deployment of Syrian troops across most of the Lebanese Republic. The present state of peace now prevailing in Lebanon is related to the conduct of """"""""Desert Storm"""""""" and its outcome; it is highly volatile. The Principal Investigator had under a previous NIMH grant (1 R03 MH44978-01) studied the relation between war stressors and depression. There is now a unique chance to study the relation between depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and war. This chance was offered because interviewing the subjects for the depression study had just been finished when the most violent outbreak of war erupted. By coincidence, the worst areas to be hit were included in the prior study. It is hoped that this work can be completed within 6 months of the end of the last hostilities and hopefully before the start of the new ones. The DIS, the war event questionnaires, the event oriented PTSD, all structured questionnaires, some adapted by the investigator to Arabic and some developed by the investigating team and used in the previous research, will be used.
| Karam, E G; Noujeim, J C; Saliba, S E et al. (1996) PTSD: how frequently should the symptoms occur? The effect on epidemiologic research. J Trauma Stress 9:899-905 |
