Mental Health in the Face of Armed Conflict: Experience from Young Adults of Kashmir

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The main aim of this qualitative study was to estimate the impact of armed conflict on mental health among young adults in Kashmir. A total of 680 undergraduate and postgraduate students completed the semi-structured questionnaire covering areas like demographic information, perception about the Kashmir conflict, and its impact on health (mental and physical) and education. Results found that 99.7% of participants reported exposure to conflict, 95.4 % experienced psychological distress, 60.3% mentioned physical sickness, and 91.2% found others mental health being affected and 99.3% expressed that their education was severely affected as a result of the conflict in Kashmir. Given the potential negative impact of conflict exposure, efforts are suggested in this direction to enhance the psychological support services to address the mental health issues in this trauma-exposed population of Kashmir.