Upon returning to their communities, children formerly associated with armed forces and armed
groups–commonly referred to as child soldiers–often confront significant community stigma. Much
research on the reintegration and rehabilitation of child soldiers has focused on exposure to past
war-related violence and mental health outcomes, yet no empirical work has yet examined the role that
post-conflict stigma plays in shaping long-term psychosocial adjustment. Two waves of data are used in
this paper from the first prospective study of male and female former child soldiers in Sierra Leone. We
examined the role of stigma (manifest in discrimination as well as lower levels of community and family
acceptance) in the relationship between war-related experiences and psychosocial adjustment
(depression, anxiety, hostility and adaptive behaviors). Former child soldiers differ from one another
with regard to their post-war experiences, and these differences profoundly shape their psychosocial
adjustment over time. Consistent with social stress theory, we observed that post-conflict factors such as
stigma can play an important role in shaping psychosocial adjustment in former child soldiers. We found
that discrimination was inversely associated with family and community acceptance. Additionally, higher
levels of family acceptance were associated with decreased hostility, while improvements in community
acceptance were associated with adaptive attitudes and behaviors. We found that post-conflict experiences
of discrimination largely explained the relationship between past involvement in wounding/killing
others and subsequent increases in hostility. Stigma similarly mediated the relationship between
surviving rape and depression. However, surviving rape continued to demonstrate independent effects
on increases in anxiety, hostility and adaptive/prosocial behaviors after adjusting for other variables.
These findings point to the complexity of psychosocial adjustment and community reintegration in these
youth and have a number of programmatic and policy implications.
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