CONSEQUENCES OF STRESS ON CHILD DEVELOPMENT

Stress can be defined as tense, anxious feeling you get when you are faced with difficult decision that requires the person’s response.  While stress is the feeling we have when we are under pressure, stressors are the things in our environment that we are responding to. Examples of stressor includes, war, racism, natural disaster, violence, disease, hunger, isolation and environmental pollution.  However, what is stressful for one person may not necessarily be stressful for another. Our experience of stress is greatly influenced by how we interpret and label our experience. In order to feel stressed, you must interpret the environment as some sort of threat or as requiring some change or adaptation on your part (www.nic.edu).

 As a child that was born some years after a 3 years civil war in my country, during my childhood the impact of that war was obvious around our environment. I noticed that many children that were born during and after the war were not able to start school at appropriate age and starvation was ravaging the communities. Many businesses could not reopen several years after the war because people lost their properties and capital to the war. The situation affected me personally as my parents could not afford a photographer’s bill for 3months and 1years birthday pictures which was the family tradition for my older brothers and sisters. My mother told me that their primary need was to feed us and send us to school and paying for baby pictures was considered unnecessary luxury they could not afford.

NATURAL DISASTER IN ASIA AND AFRICA
Some countries in Asia and Africa have experienced natural disasters such as Japan tsunami, Indonesia earthquake, Kenya and Ethiopia and Somalia drought and Uganda flooding. During such disaster, families’ home are destroyed and they lose many of their possessions, including vital supplies such as clothing, cooking equipment, bedding and medicines. A child’s few precious possessions such as toys or school supplies are also likely to be lost. Such traumatic circumstances may undermine a family’s ability to protect children from abuse and exploitation. Pregnant and nursing women, and those with small children, are particularly vulnerable. Women and children account for more than 75 per cent of displaced people following natural disasters and vulnerability of women and child refugees to sexual violence, both during transit and in refugee camps, has been extensively documented – (UNICEF UK Climate Change Report 2008). Following the Asian tsunami in 2004, World Health Organization (WHO) expressed concern that children in the region were particularly vulnerable to trafficking and other forms of exploitation, as many more women than men appeared to have died. One reason for this was thought to be that many mothers attempted to rescue their children and end up losing their lives and the children they attempted rescuing.

EFFECT ON CHILDREN

This situation definitely pose challenge to child’s development, ranging from poor nutrition, poor education , exposure to disease, lack of medical care and psychological effect such as shock from the trauma.  A study of children examined both before and after a flood disaster in Bangladesh to test stressful events role in the development of behavioral disorders in children showed that the prevalence of aggressive behavior increased from zero to nearly 10%, and 45 of the 134 children who had bladder control before the flood (34%) developed enuresis.  Click on this link to hear a child discuss her experience: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2010/jan/25/haiti-earthquake

WHAT IS BEING DONE TO MINIMIZE HARM
UNICEF United Kingdom in their Climate Change Report 2008 is suggesting that a different approach to development be used, which is to ensure that the impact of climate change on child health and survival is taken into account when developing policies and programmes.  Secondly, schools should take on important role in educating children and their families about their local environment, livelihood security, adaptation, hygiene and other health protection strategies.  In an increasingly fragile environment, all children will need the knowledge and life skills that education can bring if they are to understand, adapt to and cope with these natural disasters.

UNICEF UK Climate Change Report 2008 from http://www.crin.org/docs/climate-change.pdf

http://ftp.iza.org/dp6354.pdf

M S Durkin, N Khan, L L Davidson, S S Zaman, and Z A SteinThe effects of a natural disaster on child behavior: evidence for posttraumatic stress. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1694881/