Iraq: Displaced children suffer depression and poor health
‘ Twelve-year-old Barek Ahmed has been diagnosed as clinically depressed after his family was displaced by violence two months ago. Now living with his relatives in Baghdad, the boy laments the fact that he has left his school and friends behind, and will not be able to join a new school in the capital because of a lack of places so late in the year.
“Every year, I have the best results in my class and each day I felt I was getting closer to my dream to be a doctor,” said Ahmed. “But I have missed out on the current year and couldn’t do my exams because we had to leave our neighbourhood after insurgents threatened my father. I don’t feel excitement about anything now. The only thing I want is to return to studying because it was my dream and they took it from me.”
Ahmed is being treated by Dr Ibraheem Fatah Youssef, a professor of psychiatry at Baghdad University, who said that every month dozens of children come to him with the same problem: depression caused my lack of school attendance compounded by violence countrywide.’
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