Psychology: When childhood doesn’t last as long as it should
By Mujtaba Javaid
“Your cousin was in the mosque which has been attacked by terrorists,” said the panicked voice over the phone and a shiver ran down my spine. I was only 12 years old and was left in a state of dilemma, thinking about the friends and family we met every Friday at Jumma prayers. That day my father was out of the city on a business trip and so we (my brothers and I) hadn’t gone to the mosque.
How should a 12-year-old boy react in such a situation? Should he be scared? Or stoic? When my elder brother and I went outside after the attack, we saw chaos everywhere. We saw our neighbours talking to people passing by on motorbikes whose clothes were covered in blood — perhaps they had been helping the injured. The situation was not an ideal one for a pre-teen boy. At the time I was not mature enough to grasp the gravity of the situation. In fact, I grew up with a spate of brutal attacks since 2003, like thousands of other youngsters who grew up faster and beyond their years. We have come to understand that nothing is as good or as bad as it seems.
In 2004, a terrorist attack took place on Moharram 10, at Bacha Khan Chowk, Quetta. This was the first time I was a direct victim of a suicide bomb attack — something a 13-year-old wouldn’t want to know — for no words can describe the reality and the feelings of a young boy at such a horrific time.
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Dr Hassan Majeed, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, in Connecticut, USA, says, “Acute stress disorder and post traumatic disorder can affect children psychologically with both short and long-term negative consequences. After these traumatic incidents, children can become isolated and irritable. They can have flashbacks and even nightmares that will functionally disturb their daily lives.”
The psychiatrist adds: “Such attacks and incidents can bring on a wide array of psychological illnesses such as depression, anxiety, dissociative disorder and relationship problems, which eventually affect their performance in every field of life. Repeated trauma has the worst clinical outcome.”
Experts mention that the resulting paucity of psychological interventions has given rise to feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, increasing substance abuse and criminal behaviour among children. I don’t know about hopelessness or helplessness because I wasn’t mature at that time and couldn’t feel helpless as my father’s presence wouldn’t let us feel that way.
At that age with these fearful incidents happening, one felt strangely insecure when the phone would ring and a relative or friend would tell you, “Hello! Aunty ka beta has passed away,” [Aunty’s son has passed away] or “Hello! Un ka abhi tak pata nahi chala, haan wo hospital gaye huay hain” [There’s still no news about him; they have gone to the hospital].
And then you started getting pictures of the martyrs most of whom are the people you met on occasions or perhaps every day in nearby areas. The ‘uncle’ who would cheer you on the street while you played cricket or the shopkeeper you bought sweets from would appear in those pictures, injured, dead or mutilated in the bomb attack.