Mental Health

Doctor Came Up With Term To Describe The Trauma That Syrian Children Are Facing

By Abbie Kraft | Update Date: Feb 27, 2017 10:14 AM EST

A doctor suggests that using the term PTSD cannot fully describe the condition that Syrian children are bound to face. Dr. M.K. Hamza and his team came up with the Human Devastation Syndrome. The term was coined by Hamza and his team after he explained that Syrian children suffer a never ending trauma which is said to be far worse than PTSD.

Dr. Hamza, a neuropsychologist with the Syrian-American Medical Society opened up about the devastation young children would have to face following the Syrian war. Hamza is part of the chair for the mental health committee of SAMS. The team currently has 1,000 Syrian American members, the majority of which are volunteers who provide medical support the victims of the war.

"We have talked to so many children, and their devastation is above and beyond what even soldiers are able to see in the war," Dr. Hamza told ATTN during an interview. "They have seen dismantled human beings that used to be their parents or their siblings. You get out of a family of five or six or 10 or whatever - you get one survivor, two survivors sometimes. A lot of them have physical impairments. Amputations. Severe injuries. And they've made it to the refugee camp somehow."

Children are highly affected by the Syrian war and Hamza mentioned that the devastation that the children are bound to face are never ending. These children are engulfed with fear as they take on both emotional, physical and material problems. The Syrian civilians are not just struggling with poverty, but the residents are struggling for their lives as well.

In a statistic released by the United Nations Refugee, more than 500 thousand Syrians have been killed sine war erupted, while 6.3 million were displaced. Aside from Dr. Hamza, Iyad Alkhouri, a volunteer psychiatrist also testified about the struggles Syrian children would have to go through. It was then added that the term "Human Devastation Syndrome" can best describe the Syrian condition, but it is yet to be made official.

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