British Medical Journal
17 January 2015(vol 350, issue 7991)
http://www.bmj.com/content/350/7991

Editorials
Should children be evacuated during times of war?
Derrick Silove, professor
Author affiliations
BMJ 2015; 350 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g7824 (Published 05 January 2015) Cite this as: BMJ 2015;350:g7824
Excerpt
Maintaining the integrity of families should be a cornerstone of policies to protect children in war zones.

Debate has long surrounded the question of whether children who experience major separations from parents are at increased risk of future mental disorder.1 2 More than 30 years ago, Michael Rutter concluded that most children show remarkable resilience in the face of separations.3 However, he acknowledged that separations occurring under severe adversity can pose a major threat to future mental health.3

War represents a special case, in which separations in families occur under extreme duress.4 Nevertheless, distinguishing the long term psychiatric effects of parent-child separations from other war related traumas and stresses remains a difficult methodological challenge.4 In a linked paper (doi:10.1136/bmj.g7753) Santavirta and colleagues examine psychiatric outcomes in adulthood among a sample of 1425 Finnish children evacuated to Swedish foster families during the second world war.5 The evacuated children did not differ in their rates of hospital admissions for psychiatric disorders in adulthood from age matched siblings who remained at home or from a larger national cohort of children who remained in the war zone.

The strengths of the study are that the authors drew on a nationally representative sample using objective records to index childhood evacuation status and later psychiatric admissions. …

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Long term mental health outcomes of Finnish children evacuated to Swedish families during the second world war and their non-evacuated siblings: cohort study
BMJ 2015;350:g7753 (Published 05 January 2015)

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Clinical Review
The prevention and management of rabies
BMJ 2015;350:g7827 (Published 14 January 2015)