P-284 - Assessing post-war problems among youth in bosnia & serbia

Abstract

The Balkan wars of 1991–2002 had its greatest impact on the greater Sarajevo area in Bosnia-Herzegovina prior to the Dayton Accord and in the Pancevo region during the March to June NATO bombing attacks in 1999. An unresolved problem surrounding these events is the fact that sectarianism remains as much a problem today as it did during the conflict itself. The 70th Rose-Roth Seminar at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in 2009 noted that sectarianism among Bosniaks, Bosnian Croat Catholics and Orthodox Serbs is being reinforced by both parents and schools with youth today being “more provincial than their parents.”Our study measues the extent of youth issues among these populations using a Slavic-language version of the “Problem-Oriented Screening Instrument (POSIT) as a comparative measure of ten items: Substance Use/Abuse; Physical Health; Mental Health; Family Relations; Peer Relations; Educational Status; Vocational Status; Social Skills; Leisure & Recreation; and Aggressive Behavior/Delinguency. In 2010/2011 we administered the POSIT to the Croatian Catholic School in Kiseljak; the RS High School in East Sarajevo; the Persian Bosnian College (high school) in Sarajevo and the High School of Mechanical Engineering in Pancevo, Serbia. The data articluates the significance of mental health and social problems among these youth.