Objective – To estimate the frequency, type and severity of psychological trauma, the severity of post-traumatic stress symptom clusters and the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among Bosnia-Herzegovina (BH) refugee and internally displaced adolescents after the 1992-1995 war.  Subjects and Methods  – The sample of 217 pupils (106 females) aged of 15.1±2.1 years consisted of three groups of participants originating from different geographical regions of northeastern BH: Srebrenica (n=69), Zvornik (n=79), and Bijeljina (n=69), who were exposed to war traumas in the 1992-1995 war and were forced to leave their homes and property throughout the war and after it. The war trauma experiences, PTSD symptom severity and PTSD prevalence in the adolescents were evaluated using the Bosnia-Herzegovina version of the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ).  Results – The severity level of PTSD symptoms and social dysfunction was most severe in Srebrenica, then in Zvornik and finally in the Bijeljina group. The prevalence of PTSD differed statistically significantly between the Srebrenica group (73.9%), the Zvornik group (60.8%) and the Bijeljina group of respondents (47.6%) (I‡Â²=9.854, df=2, p=0.007).  Conclusions – There were regional variations in the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Refugee and internally displaced adolescents suffered very frequently from PTSD 3.5 years after war. The most severe war trauma was suffered by in surviving adolescents from Srebrenica, then Zvornik and finally from Bijeljina. The PTSD prevalence is highly reported and significantly differed between the groups.

In Central and Eastern European countries, after abandoning communism, significant political, economic and social changes occurred, followed by the increase in income inequality and social disparity. The goal of this study was to examine the relationship between psychological symptoms and monthly income of employees in companies undergoing privatization. The study included 258 workers from seven companies undergoing privatization in the Tuzla Canton region. For the study purposes, the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) and a general questionnaire with questions about socio-demographic characteristics, income, and workplace, were used. Monthly income of the majority of workers (207 or 80.2%) was below the monthly income in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Workers with salaries below the average salary for Bosnia and Herzegovina have pronounced somatization, anxiety, paranoia, interpersonal sensitivity and hostility. The BSI scale yielded significant negative correlation between the level of monthly salary and the expression of psychological symptoms (r = -0.184, p = 0.002) and between the level of family income and the expression of psychological symptoms (r = -0.123, p = 0.024). Based on the study results, it was determined that socio-economic factors such as the level of salary and total family income and job insecurity, educational level, marital status and gender may be predictors of psychological symptoms.

Field of medicine: social medicine, deontology.Format: Paperback monograph.Audience: Undergraduate and postgraduatestudents of medicine, general practitioners, specialists in all specializations, teachersat Schools of Medicine, and journalistswho would like to understand current policiesin the health care services. Also it couldbe a helpful tool to policy makers and usersof health care services and particularly forbasic research in the field of social medicine,health care policy.

Objective. To assess whether psychosocial support of the School Projectof the Humanitarian Society (HS) “Prijateljice (Girlfriends)” hada positive eff ect on reducing posttraumatic consequences in Bosnia-Herzegovina primary and secondary school students, aft er the 1992-1995 war. Subjects and Methods. A stratifi ed sample of 336 students,aged 13.5±1.6 (10 to18) years, in primary and secondary schools, involvedin psychosocial support, were compared with 72 randomly selectedpeers from the same schools, not involved in this project. Datawere collected in December 2005 and in May 2006. Th e Children’sDepression Inventory and the Child Post-Traumatic Stress ReactionIndex were utilized. Statistical analysis involved McNemar’s test, Students’t-test, Chi-square test and Pearson’s correlation test. Results.According to DSM, the prevalence of PTSD and depression amongstudents involved in the School Project, signifi cantly decreased from46.1% to 13.4% and 25.6% to 1.8%, respectively (McNemar’s test,P<0.001; P<0.001, respectively). In the control group the prevalenceof PTSP and depression decreased from 30.5% to 23.6% and 22.2%to 11.1%, respectively, with no signifi cance (McNemar’s test, p=0.332;p=0.077, signifi cantly). Girls had a signifi cantly higher prevalence ofboth PTSD and depression compared to the boys. Age, the numberof traumatic episodes, and suicidal behavior correlated with the intensityof PTSD symptoms and depression symptoms. Conclusions.Psychosocial support within the School Project resulted in a signifi -cant reduction of PTSP and depression amongst the involved studentscompared to the controls. Schools and other institutions ought to envisageas many projects as possible to be implemented in school andout-of-school to assist young people to overcome more easily the consequencesof the war in their development.

Research into the psychosocial consequences of war and politicalviolence on children’s and adolescent’s developmental wellbeing hasshown a steady increase over the last decades. Numerous studies, fromdiffering cultures in different war zones around the world, have documentedthe effect on children of exposure to war atrocities. The war inBosnia and Herzegovina (BH) 1992-1995, at the end of 20th centuryfound the citizens of BH and the world mental health professionalsand scientists unprepared to deal with the adverse consequences forthe entire BH population and especially for its most vulnerable part,children and adolescents, to be able to take adequate measures of sufficientmental health care to prevent devastating consequences of severemultiple traumas. Only a few research studies were done during andafter this war in BH, the United States, Sweden, Norway, the UK andGermany focusing on the relationship between war trauma, Posttraumaticstress disorder (PTSD), depression, suicidal thoughts, acculturation,repatriation, poverty, behavioral problems, school adjustment,relational problems of children and their mothers after deploymentof war PTSD veterans and war prisoners, and treatment of psychologicalconsequences in examined children and adolescents from BH.The major part of this paper reviewed available literature on Medlinethat reported national and international studies which investigated thepsychological consequences of war on BH children and adolescentsand several papers about children and adolescents from Srebrenica,that were not indexed on Medline, but showed very crucial results forthe issue described.