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Abstract

The past years have shown an increase in wars and chronic conflicts generating widespread misery and large refugee populations. A majority of these civil conflicts take place in low and middle-income countries. The past decades have simultaneously shown a steady increase in research in situations of political violence. Based on decades of research experience in these settings, this lecture elaborates research challenges in three domains, the �who�, the �what� and the �how�. The term �who� addresses the people involved, both as participants or beneficiaries of the research and as members of the research teams. The term �what� describes research themes that are needed to further develop the field of public mental health and global health for survivors. The �how� addresses a range of methodological implications and pitfalls. On the one hand this lecture argues that research in conflict situations presents a continuum with our day-to-day research and that many methodological questions can be solved with our normal tools. On the other hand, due to the volatile situation there are safety risks and problems with representativeness and validity. Different groups handle divergent psychobiosocial adaptation mechanisms in different phases of the conflict with defensive subsystems such as hyper vigilance, flight, freeze and fight. These adaptation mechanisms have implications for our research designs. Moreover, we need innovative methodologies to address prevention issues before and after the conflict and we also need longitudinal research into the outcome of civil conflicts that go beyond DSM/ICD/RDC. For example, by using staging or network models that enables us to follow recovery trajectories in a naturalistic way, transcending current classification systems and using self quantification methods.

Biography

Email: jtvmdejong@gmail.com