Examines whether Bosnian and Croatian adolescent refugees with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have difficulties in the area of self-sufficiency, or self-efficacy, in comparison with adolescent immigrants who either were not exposed to trauma or do not suffer from PTSD. Study participants were 98 refugee and displaced adolescents between the ages of 13 and 18 from communities in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbian-occupied Croatia. Two study instruments were employed: the Communal Traumatic Experiences Scale; and the Children’s Multidimensional Scales of Perceived Self-Efficacy, which measured such factors as the individual’s ability to obtain help with a problem from parents and siblings, to resist peer pressure to engage in destructive behavior, to interact successfully in a social context, to succeed in particular school subjects, and to assume individual responsibility for learning. The study yielded unexpected, but not unprecedented, findings that challenge the conventional understanding of the impact of war-related trauma on youth. For example, PTSD was not associated with decreased perceived self-efficacy, and it was the adolescent boys who did not experience war-related trauma who most needed interventions that raise self-efficacy to improve social functioning. Surviving the traumatic experiences of war may actually enable adolescents to maintain self-efficacy.
