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Brigham Young University
This study is embedded within a "family" of projects in Bosnia that are jointly sponsored by UNICEF Bosnia & Herzegovina, the UCLA Trauma Psychiatry Service, and the BYU Kennedy International Studies Center. Collectively, the aims of these projects are to (a) build and refine theory regarding the post-war psychosocial adjustment of Bosnian youths and their caretakers (the primary role of the longitudinal study featured in this proposal), (b) to actively apply the findings to UNICEF-sponsored, school-based, post-war program that are being implemented in 24 secondary schools throughout Bosnia - the School-Based Program for War-Exposed Adolescents, and (c) to provide advocacy regarding the current needs of Bosnian youths and their families, both in the form of policy recommendations to UNICEF and its government partners, and in the form of publications in professional and scientific forums.
The primary research questions for this study are grouped into five thematic topics:
This study will employ a multi-trait, multi-method, multi-source design in studying the post-war psychosocial adjustments of 1,000 Bosnian secondary school students over two years.
The first project is the Post-War Program for War-Affected Adolescents, a secondary school-based intervention program jointly sponsored by UNICEF, Brigham Young University, UCLA, and three Federal Ministries in Bosnia. Begun in 1997, this program is in its third year of implementation, and is currently in place at over 20 secondary schools throughout Bosnia. The Post-War Program is a pioneering effort, being the first large-scale program ever put in place after a war to help adolescents recover from their war-related experiences and the hardships that follow. The program is based on public health principles, and uses screening measures, individual interviews, and individual and group-based treatment to systematically identify and treat adolescents with histories of severe war trauma who are experiencing serious psychological and adjustment problems. As part of this effort, Dr. Layne and his colleagues have developed a 20-session trauma/grief-focused group treatment program to provide war-traumatized adolescents with an understanding of their symptoms, with coping skills, and with a safe and supportive group atmosphere in which they can work through their difficult experiences, grieve their losses, and resume their lives. In addition, Dr. Layne and his colleagues have traveled frequently to Bosnia to train over 50 secondary school counselors to carry out the program at their schools, and to consult and train local Bosnian community mental health professionals to support the school counselors through regular supervision meetings and visits to participating schools.
The second project is a compliment to the first, and examines how adolescents' natural environments influence how they adjust after a war. The Adolescent Post-War Adjustment Study is a cooperative effort between BYU, UCLA, UNICEF, and two Sarajevo secondary schools. The study examines long-term post-war adjustment in 1,000 Bosnian adolescents, and gathers data from the adolescents themselves, their parents or caretakers, and their schoolteachers. Adopting a developmental/ecological perspective, Dr. Layne and his colleagues are studying how war both directly and indirectly influences adolescent postwar adjustment through such factors in the physical environment as being exposed to reminders of traumatic experiences and losses, economic adversity, and dislocation from one's homeland. In addition, the team is studying how such factors in the social environment as parenting style, family harmony versus conflict, and supportive peer relations can help to make adolescents more resilient-or more vulnerable to-the effects of trauma and adversity. Last, the team is examining how the physical and social environments and adolescents are related to the adolescents' psychological development, including such things as their self-image, self-confidence, and their plans for the future, and how these in turn can make them more resilient or more vulnerable to stressful life events. Through this research, Dr. Layne and his colleagues hope to accomplish three main goals. The first is to deepen our theoretical understanding of how young people and their families adjust after a devastating war. The second is to identify predictors of future adjustment, which can then be used by mental health professionals to identify youths who are most in need of specialized intervention. The third goal is to identify social and environmental factors that can, themselves, be targeted to either reduce their harmful effects, or to promote their beneficial effects, through specialized intervention programs.