Six years of constant brutality and bloodshed in Syria has created a “terrifying mental health crisis” for a generation of traumatized children, leaving some suicidal and others unable to speak.
Those are just some of the stark findings in Save the Children’s new report Invisible Wounds. The aid agency said it is the largest mental health survey inside Syria since the war began in 2011, and warned that millions of Syrian children could be living in a state of “toxic stress.” Nearly 3 million Syrian children under the age of 6 have lived their whole lives in a warzone, according to the report’s findings, while more than 2 million children have been forced to flee the country as refugees.
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“After six years of war, we are at a tipping point, after which the impact on children’s formative years and childhood development may be so great that the damage could be permanent and irreversible,” Marcia Brophy, a senior mental health adviser for Save the Children, wrote in the report.
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