PSYCHOLOGICAL DETERIORATION AND RESILIENCE IN CHILDREN EXPOSED TO ARMED CONFLICTS

Peace is too often taken for granted, especially when you are a child. Not a single 5-year-old kid, born in Italy, would ever consider what it means to live under enemy fire or would ever know thirst, hunger, the pain of a major open wound, terror or even just the longing for a never known native land, from which they fled from. Unfortunately, this is not the reality everywhere, if anything the numbers speak for themselves: of just over 2 billion children in the world, estimations tell us that over 473 million are currently living in a conflict zone, have fled one or are labelled as either internally or externally displaced refugees. The purpose of this paper is to examine the psychological consequences, in terms of development and trauma, of which children are the fulcrum, with a separate section dedicated to their extraordinary capacity of resilience. Ultimately, this report mentions the most reliable solutions and therapies to date, aimed at mitigating the damages of war exposure in early ages and adolescence.