The impact of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Devastated trust.

This article discusses the impact of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In particular, the authors discuss the relation between trauma and (dis)trust. Specifically, the issue of trust among the war-stricken people of Bosnia and Herzegovina is the focus of this article. It is hypothesized that war has exerted a clear impact on individual well-being. Next, war has had a clear impact on assigning meaning to life and the surrounding (social) world. Finally, the authors hypothesize that there is a relationship between the occurrence of intrusive memories and avoidance strategies, on the one hand, and trust on the other. Three samples of Bosnian people were used in this study: 366 Bosnian refugees in the Netherlands, 128 citizens of Sarajevo and Zenica, and 1,886 Bosnian clients of a large-scale mental health project in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The findings of this study show that painful, intrusive memories are related to feelings of distrust, lack of optimism, and perceptions of the world as malevolent.