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Legacies of Conflict: Children in Northern Ireland

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Responses to Traumatized Children

Abstract

For children in many countries, political violence has been a defining characteristic of their lives (Jones 2002). In a recent review of the literature on children, war and trauma, Barenbaum et al. (2004) claim that children are a highly vulnerable and voiceless population during war, and more needs to be done to understand the impact of exposure to conflict on mental health and to bring this to public attention. Northern Ireland has, for the past 35 years, been a country characterized by political violence and societal instability and it has a relatively youthful population (Cairns 1987). Therefore it would be pertinent to review over three decades of research exploring the legacies and impacts of exposure to political conflict on child mental health conducted in Northern Ireland.

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© 2007 Eve Binks and Neil Ferguson

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Binks, E., Ferguson, N. (2007). Legacies of Conflict: Children in Northern Ireland. In: Hosin, A.A. (eds) Responses to Traumatized Children. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230625808_12

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