Annual of social work, Vol. 14 No. 3, 2007.
Original scientific paper
QUALITY OF LIFE OF PERSONS AFFECTED BY THE WAR
Dean Ajduković
Radojka Kraljević
Sandra Penić
Abstract
The paper compares the quality of life of two groups of people who live in the areas affected by the war: persons who fulfil the diagnostic criterion of mental disorder and the persons who probably do not suffer from the mental disorder. The influence of traumatization, socio-demographic characteristics and the current mental health on the quality of life of these people was also analysed. The data were obtained through a structured interview on the representative sample of adult persons aged from 18 to 65 (N=454) in two counties. More than a third of participants (36.1 %) fulfilled the criterion for one or more mental-health disorders. It has been determined that persons who have not been diagnosed have a significantly higher quality of life than the persons suffering from depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the anxiety disorder. The interviewed persons differed among themselves, as those suffering from PTSD assessed that their physical and mental health was worse than the persons suffering from depression assessed their health. Out of nine predictors of the quality of life, the hierarchical analysis showed that only less level of depression and better economic status proved to be significant, while exposure to traumatization, socio-demographic variables, anxiety disorder and post-traumatic disorder were not predictive when all the predictors were analysed. Long-term poor conditions of life in post-war communities probably contribute to the development of mental disorders, which are intensified by the reduced capacity for facing in the population that survived the war, and that is reflected in the poor quality of life of those people.
Keywords
traumatization; quality of life of the victims of war; mental health
Hrčak ID:
18886
URI
Publication date:
30.12.2007.
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