ANGER IN ADULTHOOD IN PARTICIPANTS WHO LOST THEIR FATHER DURING THE WAR IN CROATIA WHEN THEY WERE IN THEIR FORMATIVE AGE

Background: Loss of parents in early childhood can have serious long-term psychological consequences. Abandoned by a close figure of attachment, many persons have developed the emotion of anger, even though the separation was caused by death. The traumatic experience of the loss of a parent is particularly hard in war, because most often it does not occur as an individual trauma. Our aim is to research anger as a personality trait in persons whose father had died in war at a time when they were children, and to compare it with an appropriate civilian control group of subjects. Subjects and methods: The study comprised 155 persons of both sexes. The target group consisted of persons (N=98) whose father had died in the Homeland War and who had just been born at the time of their father\u27s death, or were children or adolescents, and had since their father\u27s death grown up in a single-parent family with their mother, while the control group of subjects (N=57) had not suffered any war losses in the family in the war time from 1991 to 1995. The examined variables were: sex, age, loss of father due to civilian or war causes, marital status, age when the subject lost their father, anger as a state and as a personality trait. STAXI is used in this study; it is frequently used in studies of experiencing, expressing and controlling anger in persons suffering from PTSD. Results: Statistically significant differences were demonstrated in some of the scales and subscales of anger as a state and anger as a personality trait between the abovementioned subject groups, with higher scores in persons who had suffered a civilian loss of father. Conclusions: The study supports the opinion that the social context in which the grieving person is before, during and after the loss of a close person has an important role in the process of grieving, and eventually defines the social and personal meaning of death

Health and Sexuality in Elderly People

U novije vrijeme raste interes za istraživanja o starijoj životnoj dobi, a razlog tome je što u ukupnoj populaciji raste broj starijih osoba. Samo u RH oko 16 % ukupne populacije čine osobe starije životne dobi. U ovom radu cilj je prikazati s kojim se sve problemima suočavaju osobe treće životne dobi kada je u pitanju njihova seksualnost, prije svega zato što se na seksualnost gleda kao na jedan od važnih aspekata zdravlja svakog pojedinca. Neka recentnija istraživanja iz svijeta češće su citirana, jer kod nas to još nije značajno područje interesa znanstvenika i istraživača, te se glavnina istraživanja uglavnom odnosi na seksualnost do treće životne dobi. Cilj rada je i potaknuti istraživače da se u većem broju bave ovom problematikom s obzirom na brojnost osoba treće životne dobi. Također na umu treba imati i da je sve veći broj braniteljske populacije, posebice oni koji su bili u zatočeništvu u srpskim logorima i koji su prošli različite oblike mučenja koje uključuje i seksualno zlostavljanje. To je već sada razvidno ostavilo duboki kako psihološki tako i zdravstveni trag na njihovu seksualnost, a riječ je o nemalom broju osoba koje uskoro ulaze u treću životnu dob.Recently, interest in research on elderly persons has been growing due to the growing number of elderly people in the total population. Just in the Republic of Croatia, about 16 % of the total population are older persons. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the problems faced by elderly people when it comes to their sexuality, primarily because sexuality is regarded as one of the important aspects of the individual’s health. We will address some recent studies from outside Croatia, as this is still not area of interest for our scientists and researchers and most of their research is related to sexuality before older age. The aim of the paper is also to encourage researchers to engage with this issue more because of the growing number of elderly people. Furthermore, one must keep in mind that a significant number of people in the population of war veterans, especially those who were in captivity in Serbian concentration camps and who underwent various forms of torture including sexual abuse that has already left a deep and evident mark on their psychological and physical health, including their sexuality, are about to enter the third age

Medievalism in contemporary Fantasy: a new Species of Romance

Contemporary fantasists are often inspired by the texts from and with medieval context. This paper taps into Horace Walpole’s principles revealed in the preface to The Castle of Otranto to show that the works of medieval fantasy and contemporary fantasy subgenres written in 20th and 21st centuries have a lot in common with Walpole’s recipe for creating ‘a new species of romance’. When considered from the present time, the Medieval period can be seen as being halfway between fantasy and reality, in a blurry area where the two overlap, and contemporary fantasists use this trait to build their fictional worlds as effective reverberators of universal themes that remain interesting, appealing and worth repeating

POSTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDERS (PTSD) BETWEEN FALLACY AND FACTS: WHAT WE KNOW AND WHAT WE DON\u27T KNOW?

Background: PTSD been recognized as a major problem in public health and has attracted an ever-growing scientific, epistemological and clinical interest. On the other side, PTSD is one of the most controversial diagnosis in psychiatry as well as in medicine in general. Method: We have made an overview of available literature on PTSD to identify what is our real knowledge about PTSD with all dilemmas, controversies and challenges. Results: We have various options as to how to evaluate, explain and describe PTSD and other trauma-related mental and somatic disorders. In this paper we compiled an extensive set of facts and meta-facts in order to to understand the real nature of traumatic stress, negative life events and PTSD. Conclusion: Conflict between various concepts of PTSD and our current knowledge will probably bring with itself a new scientific paradigm with new diagnostic phenotypes and refining the old ones

VIOLENCE WITHOUT A FACE: THE ANALYSIS OF TESTIMONIES OF WOMEN WHO WERE SEXUALLY ASSAULTED DURING THE WAR IN CROATIA AND BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

Background: This study examined testimonies of women who were sexually assaulted multiple times by multiple unknown offenders. In these testimonial narratives, it is possible to detect specific modalities of traumatic event expression. This expression lacks any spatial, temporal, auditory or emotional determinants of the event. Subjects and methods: These fourteen women (out of 17) were imprisoned and forcefully isolated in detention camps or private houses in the occupied territories of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the war. At the same time, some of these women were raped by the offenders that were previously known to them. The average length of detention was 141 days among the seventeen victims (range of 7 to 395 days), while the average time from the first day of imprisonment to the first day of testimony was 311 days (range of 30 to 889 days). Results: Based on the narrative descriptions of the events acquired from these testimonies, our analysis showed that these expressions differed when the offender was known to the victim, contrasted to the situation when the offender was completely unknown. This finding has a significant implication in victim\u27s testimony at judicial hearings. Specifically, women that were raped by unknown perpetrator(s) were often unable to provide persuasive testimony and their recollection of the events was deemed insufficient for the further prosecution. Testimonies in these cases substantially lacked in vividness and were devoid of visuospatial determinants of the rape event. Consequently, this often resulted in the case’s dismissal. Conclusion: The unusual and problematic expression of these traumatic memories might indicate that these events were not properly stored in the conceptual form of memory. Ultimately, victims could not make any coherent recollection or reconstruct the cascade of events by using perceptual information. We argue that this could be due to an aberrant mechanism of memory storage and difficulties that emerge on the level of sensory input. This problem needs to be further examined and correspondingly accounted for since it can exert significant influence on judicial outcomes in the domain of sexual assault cases worldwide

Subjective Assessment of Quality of Life of Persons whose Fathers Had Died in the Homeland War

The aim of this paper is to show the current subjective assessment of the quality of life of persons whose fathers had died in war, and compare it with regard to some of their socio-demographic characteristics. The study included 494 participants who had come for a physical and psychiatric examination to one of the health institutions in Zagreb, Rijeka, Osijek or Split in which examinations were arranged. The inclusion criterion was growing up in a single-parent family as a consequence of the father dying in war. Data were collected using a structured clinical interview which also included socio-demographic data: the age and gender of the participant, educational status, marital status, employment status, household income. Also, participants were asked to fill out the World Health Organization Quality of Life Questionnaire – short form (WHOQOL-BREF). Data obtained from this study are descriptive, and are in line with the data obtained on the general population when it comes to comparisons of the assessment of quality of life and certain demographic characteristics. Special emphasis should be given to the link between age and overall satisfaction with the quality of life, with younger persons being more satisfied with the total quality of life than the older study participants. In conclusion, all participants of this study had a specific traumatic experience during the war – their father’s death, therefore more data regarding the quality of life of this population can be expected upon a more detailed analysis and establishment of the contribution of traumatization, socio-demographic variables and current mental health to the explanation of the subjective satisfaction with life. A more detailed analysis of the collected data will be available in subsequent papers

POSTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDERS (PTSD) FROM DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES: A TRANSDISCIPLINARY INTEGRATIVE APPROACH

Background: Psychotraumatization continues to be a pervasive aspect of life in the 21st century all over the world so we should better understand psychological trauma and PTSD for the sake of prevention and healing. Method: We have made an overview of available literature on PTSD to identify explanatory models, hypotheses and theories. Results: In this paper we describe our transdisciplinary multiperspective integrative model of PTSD based on the seven perspective explanatory approach, on the fifth discipline, the art and practice of the learning organization as well as on the method of multiple working hypotheses.Trauma vulnerability, strengths, resilience and posttraumatic growth are key concepts that enable an integration of the distinct perspectives into a coherent transdisciplinary multiperspective explanatory and treatment model of PTSD. Conclusion: PTSD is a complex highly disabling and suffering disorder where the past is always present in people haunted by the dread frozen in memory of the traumatic events. However, PTSD also represents an oportunity for psychological and spiritual growth due to the human ability to adapt and thrive despite experiencing adversity and tough times

Age-Developmental Stage and Severity of Trauma Related Symptoms, Anxiety and Depressive Symptoms in Participants who Lost their Fathers during the War in Croatia

Children of different ages will experience a traumatic event in a different ways. The most important in the generalization of research findings is recognizing that children of different ages think differently, act differently and have different emotional functioning. Experiences that are extremely traumatic to an adult may be perceived by a young child as something that is not so frightening. The fear that the child feels will more frequently be a reflection of that of the adult rather than generated by the child’s own perception of the event. So, the individual experience of the trauma is age dependent. Our study focused on children who lost their fathers in conditions of war. The aim was to explore the association between age-developmental stages and the severity of trauma related symptoms, anxiety and depressive symptoms in participants who lost their fathers during the war. The study included 103 people who lost their fathers during the war in Croatia, who came to the physical and psychiatric examination organized by the Ministry of Family, War Veterans and Intergenerational Solidarity. The sample was consisted of the participants who were children, or not born yet, at the time when they lost their fathers during the war in Croatia. At the time of interview, the participants were aged between 15 and 35 years old. Data was collected using a structured clinical interview which also included socio-demographic data. Data about former and current psychiatric symptoms were collected using the following instruments: Clinician- Administrated PTSD Scale (CAPS), Hamilton anxiety scale (HAMA), Hamilton depression scale (HAMD). Results showed that there was significant correlation between age and results on used scales. The participants who lost their fathers at a very young age or even before they were born showed less trauma symptoms (r=0.249; p<0.05) less anxiety (r=0.374; p<0.01) and depressive (r=0.384; p<0.01) symptoms than participants who lost their fathers at an older age. The study confirmed that the individual experience of the trauma of losing a father in war circumstances is associated with age