Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms Among Women Survivors of Kandhamal as Affected by Communal Violence

Recurrent violence can bring psychological trauma and instill long lasting effects on individuals and society. In 2008, the state of Odisha succumbed to the cruelest "communal violence" ever faced by the Christian community in post-independent India, leaving many survivors with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. There are no known psychological researches conducted among the Dalit Christian survivors of this communal violence to assess their PTSD symptoms. The focus of this study is to investigate the PTSD symptoms among rural, illiterate and least educated and low-income category of the adult women survivors who are seldom part of any research. Hence, the PTSD measures harvard trauma questionnaire (HTQ) Part I, Part IV, and PCLC were translated to Oriya, the language of the survivors. A total of 211 adult women survivors of communal violence were assessed. The results show that communal violence and social factors affected in the development and maintenance of PTSD symptoms among the participants. The findings of our study indicate that among the female adult survivors of communal violence there is prevalence of high PTSD (28.9%) as measured by PCLC and (26.5%) as measured by HTQ.