Nature of trauma disorders in Zimbabwe Whilst the extent of trauma due to OVT and PTE‘s may not be clearly understood, there is some evidence about the nature of such disorders. The most detailed work has been done on the survivors of the Liberation War, but it has been possible to contrast this group – of chronic survivors – with the survivors of the more recent violence. The rationale here is that there has been little direct assistance to any of the groups of trauma survivors from any of the conflicts that have afflicted Zimbabwe, and hence there must a large population of untreated survivors with chronic disorders. An unpublished report contrasted survivors from the survivors from the 1970s with those from the period 2000 to 2002xxxiv. This was a sample of 998 in total, with 402 from the 1970s and 586 from the period 2000 to 2002, and 70% were male. The survivors overall report many symptoms, both physical and psychological. They report more physical than psychological symptoms (as we would expect from recent work in cross cultural psychology and psychiatry), and some will have so many symptoms than they could be classified as somatoform disorders, Which contemporary cross cultural psychology would predict..xxxv 46% reported one kind of problem with sleep or the other. A little more than a third of the sample [34.9%] reported scores on the SRQ-8 that were in the clinically significant range. When the data was classified according to time period, then a number of differences emerged between the 1970s and post-2000. The 1970s group reported significantly higher rates of Impact torture, as well as many more types of torture overall, as well as there being a much greater probability of a survivor‘s abuse being witnessed in the 1970s. However, there are much higher rates of detention taking place in the current time period. The SRQ-8 was significantly higher in the 1970s group, which suggests that chronicity may be operating here. Reported sleep problems were more common in the 2000-2002 group. Detention was again, as in other studies, significantly related to a number of factors. Only 107 [11.1%] reported being detained, but the detained group reported high rates of most types of torture, with Impact torture and the overall number of different torture types strongly significant. Once again, detention was significantly associated with worse torture, and there were some unexpected differences in the health consequences for the two groups: those not detained were more likely to score high on the SRQ-8, as well as more frequently reporting sleep disorder. The one strong finding from this study was that the 1970s group were more likely to have both higher SRQ-8 scores and report more serious torture. However, when torture was used as the independent variable, this did not distinguish the groups in terms of the SRQ-8 score. Thus, it seems safe to conclude that the probability of acquiring a clinically significant psychological disorder increases as a function of the time between the original ill-treatment and the time of assistance rather than being a function of ill-treatment itself. It is also significant that there were a significantly larger number of cases of psychological disorder in the 1970s group. Thus, the long-term prognosis for survivors of torture is generally not good, and this replicates the general findings elsewhere. It should also be noted that trauma is rarely a single event, but can be ongoing in various ways, as has been noted previouslyxxxvi. In particular, such forms of complex trauma reactions are likely to be very closely imbricated with the consequences of complex and cumulative HIV related bereavement. Physical disability One of the obvious consequences of physical, or Impact torture, is the possibility of physical injury and consequent disability, especially where the physical injury is not treated or treatment is significantly delayed. Psychological impairment The conventional finding is that OVT causes PTSD, crudely expressed, and this is supported by a very large literature, but has not been extensively researched in Zimbabwe. It is clear, as was shown in Table 3 that most studies show psychological disorder, with varying rates. We are not, however,