Background

Although it is now firmly established that armed conflict been conducted on war veterans despite the fact that war leads to a greater burden on the civilian population Bell et al. Conflict and Health 2012, 6:10 http://www.conflictandhealth.com/content/6/1/10PTSD is only one of a number of possible outcomes1Médicos sin Fronteras España, Misión Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia Full list of author information is available at the end of the articlehas a detrimental effect on the mental health of those living in active conflict zones [1-3] it remains the case that we still know remarkably little about how different characteristics of conflict lead to specific forms of psy-chopathology and psychological impairment in civilians. This is likely due to the fact that great majority of the re-search on the psychological effects of armed conflict has than on soldiers [4]. Although early studies on civilians tended to focus on the impact of war on the risk of developing posttrau-matic stress disorder (PTSD), it has now become clear that the effects of conflict extend beyond the direct effects of violence to include a host of social and eco-nomic hardships that can be as equally important in de-termining the likelihood of developing a mental illness [5]. Furthermore, epidemiological work has shown that * Correspondence