Impact of political violence on the mental health of school children in Egypt.

BACKGROUND

Since the beginning of the Egyptian political conflict, Tahrir Square has been the epicentre of intense political violence. Students attending schools located near this square witnessed and/or directly experienced the consequences of a series of violent events.

AIM

This study will investigate the presence of psychiatric symptoms in children attending these schools to explore patterns of responses according to their perceptions of the revolution on their lives, adjusted for, gender and socio-economic status.

METHOD

A descriptive cross-sectional study conducted with 515 Egyptian school children attending government, experimental, and private language schools located within 1 km of Tahrir Square. To assess psychiatric symptoms in these children, a specially designed questionnaire was used to detect, depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and impairments.

RESULTS

Children attending schools near Tahrir Square showed high rates of depression, PTSD and anxiety symptoms. The risk factors identified for developing psychiatric symptoms were a negative perception of the effect of the revolution, knowing someone exposed to trauma during the events, female gender and low socio-economic class.

DISCUSSION

These results highlight the need for large-scale studies to explore the consequences of ongoing political violence on children and to establish baseline data on the mental health of Egyptian children.