Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Home
  • Home
Article
  • Cited by 1

  • Access
  • Open access

Peacekeepers deserve more mental health research and care

  • Jun Shigemura (a1), Masanori Nagamine (a1), Nahoko Harada (a2), Masaaki Tanichi (a1), Kunio Shimizu (a3) and Aihide Yoshino (a1)...

Summary

United Nations peacekeeping personnel face numerous stressors due to their challenging deployments. Past studies have had inconsistent results regarding whether or not their deployment experience affects their mental health outcomes. Further studies are required to ascertain the associations between their outcomes and factors before, during and after their peacekeeping missions.

  • View HTML

      • Send article to Kindle

      To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle.

      Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

      Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

      Peacekeepers deserve more mental health research and care
      Available formats
      ×

      Send article to Dropbox

      To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your <service> account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox.

      Peacekeepers deserve more mental health research and care
      Available formats
      ×

      Send article to Google Drive

      To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your <service> account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive.

      Peacekeepers deserve more mental health research and care
      Available formats
      ×

Copyright

COPYRIGHT: © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 2016
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Non-Commercial, No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Corresponding author

Jun Shigemura, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, National Defense Medical College, 3-2 Namiki, Tokorozawa, Saitama 359-8513, Japan. Email: shige@ndmc.ac.jp

Footnotes

Hide All

Declaration of interest

None.

Copyright and usage

© The Royal College of Psychiatrists 2016. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Non-Commercial, No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.

Footnotes

References

Hide All
1 United Nations. UN Peacekeeping Operations Fact Sheet: 31 October 2015. UN, 2015 (http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/documents/bnote1015.pdf).
2 Shigemura, J, Nomura, S. Mental health issues of peacekeeping workers. Psychiatry Clin Neurosci 2002; 56: 483–91.
3 Sareen, J, Cox, BJ, Afifi, TO, Stein, BM, Belik, SL, Meadows, G, et al. Combat and peacekeeping operations in relation to prevalence of mental disorders and perceived need for mental health care: findings from a large representative sample of military personnel. Arch Gen Psychiatry 2007; 64: 843–52.
4 Seet, B, Burnham, GM. Fatality trends in United Nations peacekeeping operations, 1948–1998. JAMA 2000; 284: 598–603.
5 Sawamura, T, Shimizu, K, Masaki, Y, Kobayashi, N, Sugawara, M, Tsunoda, T, et al. Mental health in Japanese members of the United Nations peacekeeping contingent in the Golan Heights: effects of deployment and the Middle East situation. Am J Orthopsychiatry 2008; 78: 85–92.
6 Han, CS, Kim, YK. Psychiatric symptoms reported by international peacekeeping personnel in the Western Sahara Desert. J Nerv Ment Dis 2001; 189: 858–60.
7 Chen, SD, Sun, XY, Zhang, LY, Kong, LM, Chen, LJ, Guo, J, et al. Psychological maladjustment of Asian and African peacekeepers in Liberia and its related factors. Psychol Health Med 2015; 21: 460–8.
8 Souza, WF, Figueira, I, Mendlowicz, MV, Volchan, E, Portella, CM, Mendonça-de-Souza, AC, et al. Posttraumatic stress disorder in peacekeepers: a meta-analysis. J Nerv Ment Dis 2011; 199: 309–12.
9 Sareen, J, Stein, MB, Thoresen, S, Belik, SL, Zamorski, M, Asmundson, GJ. Is peacekeeping peaceful? A systematic review. Can J Psychiatry 2010; 55: 464–72.
10 Forbes, D, O'Donnell, M, Brand, RM, Korn, S, Creamer, M, McFarlane, AC, et al. The long-term mental health impact of peacekeeping: prevalence and predictors of psychiatric disorder. BJPsych Open 2016; 2: 32–7.
11 Warner, CH, Appenzeller, GN, Parker, JR, Warner, CM, Hoge, CW. Effectiveness of mental health screening and coordination of in-theater care prior to deployment to Iraq: a cohort study. Am J Psychiatry 2011; 168: 378–85.
12 Michel, PO, Lundin, T, Larsson, G. Stress reactions among Swedish peacekeeping soldiers serving in Bosnia: a longitudinal study. J Trauma Stress 2003; 16: 589–93.
13 Shigemura, J, Tanigawa, T, Saito, I, Nomura, S. Psychological distress in workers at the Fukushima nuclear power plants. JAMA 2012; 308: 667–9.
14 Brounéus, K. On return from peacekeeping: a review of current research on psychological well-being in military personnel returning from operational deployment. J Mil Veterans Health 2014; 22: 2530.
15 Connorton, E, Perry, MJ, Hemenway, D, Miller, M. Humanitarian relief workers and trauma-related mental illness. Epidemiol Rev 2012; 34: 145–55.
16 Strohmeier, H, Scholte, WF. Trauma-related mental health problems among national humanitarian staff: a systematic review of the literature. Eur J Psychotraumatol 2015; 6: 28541.

Metrics

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Abstract views

Total abstract views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between <date>. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed

  • Cited by 1

  • Access
  • Open access

Peacekeepers deserve more mental health research and care

  • Jun Shigemura (a1), Masanori Nagamine (a1), Nahoko Harada (a2), Masaaki Tanichi (a1), Kunio Shimizu (a3) and Aihide Yoshino (a1)...
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.

×

Reply to: Submit a response

Your details

Conflicting interests

Do you have any conflicting interests? *