Issue 3/4 Vol. 34 1992

Experience of war in chronic schizophrenic patients living in war operation areas and out of them

KEREPCIC, I., VULETIN, J., MUACEVIC, V., MATIC, J., KAJEVIC, M., MANDIC, K.

This is a study of war events reflection on chronic schizophrenic inpatients. The tested group consisted of 32 patients that had been exposed to direct war operations in the psychiatric hospitals of Petrinja and Pakrac, and were then transferred to the Popova~a hospital where there were no direct war operations. The control group consisted of diagnostically equal 32 patients hospitalized in the Popova~a hospital during the pre-crisis period.

This paper is the result of the authors' research. The questionnaire consists of 16 questions, providing the information on all aspects of thoughts, behavior and experiences of the war, and the attitude towards the future. The statistical evaluation by means of the Chi-square test shows that the tested group of patients has experienced the war more intensively, since the category of "being burdened by it but difficult to talk about" occurs more frequently. During the air raids this group expressed the fear more frequently, expecting somebody to help. These patients were also less informed about the war as they did not follow the news regularly.

In this patient population, the war issues were discussed during the therapeutic community meetings, in small groups and individually. Thus we realized the importance of the patient's regressiveness grade: If the stay in a war region with shooting and bombing provokes the feeling of intensive fear in a normal person, for a moderately regressive patient it is uneasiness, and for a deeply regressive one, it is only a movie.

Keywords: psychiatry in war, war, chronic schizophrenic patients

Short Title: Kerepcic, I. et al. (1992) PsyBeit 3-4:327

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