Early Childhood Trauma in Humanitarian Crisis Settings: Factors and Effects (A Review)

Childhood trauma is strongly connected to both mental and physical health problems that can occur and persist for a lifetime. Humanitarian crises often cause trauma, especially to vulnerable populations such as children and women. This review seeks to evaluate early childhood trauma in the context of humanitarian crises, highlighting the predisposing, precipitating, perpetuating, and protective factors as well as identifying the short- and long-term consequences of childhood trauma while also examining some strategies that would help mitigate the effect of childhood trauma in humanitarian settings. We searched four databases, namely PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, and grey literature sources for relevant literature. We reviewed 50 eligible studies. We found that factors that can either predispose, precipitate, or perpetuate physical, mental, and social trauma to children are more pronounced during humanitarian crises, and this could have serious consequences on the neurodevelopmental process of a child. Factors such as age, gender, location, and family predispose children to trauma, while factors like family separation, migration, food insecurity, and poor healthcare access are found to precipitate childhood trauma. These have harmful effects on children's mental health, especially when they occur in early childhood. Family response to traumatic experiences in humanitarian crises, duration of exposure, and exposure to several types of traumas worsen the impact of humanitarian crises on the child's mental health. Implementation of strategies and policies such as the Mental Health Gap Action Program can significantly reduce the incidence of early childhood trauma in humanitarian crises.