Impact of Exposure to Armed Violence and Drug Use on Nightmares, Anhedonia and Somatic Symptoms in the Kashmiri population

Abstract

Armed violence can be defined as utilization of weapons to cause injury, death or psycho social hurt, which subverts advancement. This study was aimed to understand the impact of armed violence and drug use of anhedonia, nightmares and somatic symptoms in the Kashmiri population. The research followed a between subject design where exposure to violence, substance use and gender were the independent variables and nightmares, anhedonia and somatic symptoms were used as the dependent variables. The sample consisted of 74 males and 74 females from the various districts of the Kashmir valley. It was hypothesized that the prevalence of nightmares, anhedonia and somatic symptoms will be more in subjects who have been exposed to armed violence. Drug use was postulated to be positively related to these three internalizing symptoms. The t test used to measure the difference between mean scores of subjects exposed to armed violence v/s the ones that have never been exposed to armed violence was significant for nightmares and somatic symptoms but not for anhedonia. Females showed a significantly higher score on the somatic symptoms checklist whereas males scored significantly higher on the anhedonia scale.