Explosive anger as a response to human rights violations in post-conflict Timor-Leste

Factorial structure of complicated grief: associations with loss-related traumatic events and psychosocial impacts of mass conflict amongst West Papuan refugees

“…Lack of access to justice arising from human rights violations was strongly associated with the complicated grief domains of anger/negative appraisal in addition to yearning/preoccupation and shock/ disbelief. The nexus between the sense of injustice and anger/negative appraisal is consistent with general findings in past research amongst populations exposed to persecution and gross human rights violations [18,20,21,40]. Our findings may assist in defining more clearly the nature of this link by emphasizing the importance of complicated grief as a major influence in generating anger/negative appraisals amongst populations exposed to extensive human rights violations associated with extensive traumatic losses.…”

“…In studies in Timor-Leste, a neighbouring country to West Papua with a comparable history of persecution under Indonesian rule, traumatic loss arising from witnessing murder of families or kin, and related aspects of injustice, were associated with a range of adverse mental health outcomes [19][20][21]. As yet, however, no study has examined for a specific relationship of these three ADAPT domains (or those associated with the sense of identity and existential meaning) with complicated grief [22].…”

Emotion dysregulation mediates the relationship between trauma exposure, post-migration living difficulties and psychological outcomes in traumatized refugees

“…Accordingly, refugees evidence elevated rates of psychological disorders including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression (Fazel et al, 2005;Steel et al, 2009). There is also emerging evidence that individuals exposed to conflict and persecution report high rates of other disorders, such as intermittent explosive disorder (IED; Brooks et al, 2011;Silove et al, 2009), which is characterized by spontaneous anger attacks that are out of proportion to triggering events, and may result in violence and the destruction of property (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Research conducted over the past three decades has documented a doseresponse relationship between trauma exposure and psychological distress in refugees (Mollica et al, 1998a(Mollica et al, , 1998bSteel et al, 2009).…”

Six-year trajectories of post-traumatic stress and severe psychological distress symptoms and associations with timing of trauma exposure, ongoing adversity and sense of injustice: a latent transition analysis of a community cohort in conflict-affected Timor-Leste

“…Past studies in the field, including in Timor-Leste, have suggested that cumulative trauma 11 and ongoing adversity ( poverty and family/community conflict) are important factors in exacerbating symptoms of PTS and psychological distress, 10 but most past inquiries have been limited by their cross-sectional designs. [12][13][14] The unique aspect of our inquiry is its longitudinal design and the intercession of a recurrent period of conflict (2006)(2007) at the midpoint of follow-up, exposing our study population to further trauma. An additional factor which we explore is the influence of the sense of injustice on symptom trajectories, focusing on relevant historical periods in which the population was exposed to human rights abuses and severe deprivations.…”