Psychiatric help to psychotraumatized persons during and after war in Croatia.

Aim: To present organization of psychosocial support and treatment of traumatized persons during and after the 1991-1995 war in Croatia.

Method: Description of application and results of community-based National Program of Psychosocial Help to War Victims, and retrospective analysis of hospitalizations for psychotrauma at the National Center for Psychotrauma, Dubrava University Hospital.

Results: During the 1991-1995 war in Croatia, the population faced severe traumatic events, and the need for organized psychosocial help to traumatized persons was great. Government has established the network of psychosocial help in 1994. This was the beginning of the National Program of Psychosocial Help to War Victims. As a strategy in building a social support, the pyramidal model consisting of five levels of psychosocial help was used. The levels were the following: 1) preventive programs in mental health, 2) nonspecific psychological help in community, 3) basic psychological help, 4) psychiatric institutionalized help and specific psychological help, and 5) national coordination and operative planning. During the war, the work primarily centered around community-based approach, satisfying the current needs of the traumatized people, such as food, medication, and clothes, and providing crisis psychological interventions and urgent psychiatric help. In 1999, this organizational scheme was replaced by the establishment of the National Center for Psychotrauma and four Regional Centers for Psychotrauma in Zagreb, Rijeka, Osijek, and Split. In the post-war period, the emphasis was on psychological and social help in the community and on institutionalized approach to treatment of psychotrauma. According to the data of the Croatian Institute of Public Health, in the 1998 and 1999 there were 1,744 and 2,415 hospitalizations due to PTSD and related disorders, respectively.

Conclusion: The community-based approach remained central in dealing with psychotraumatized persons during and after the war. In the post-war period, the emphasis was put on non-specific and specific psychological and social help in the community, with institutionalized approach to the treatment of PTSD and related disorders, whereas satisfying the current needs (food, medication, clothing), intervention in the crisis situations and urgent psychiatric interventions were of prime importance during the war.