The association between terrorist attacks and mental health: evidence from Nigeria

ABSTRACT

This study examines the relationship between the Boko Haram conflict in Northeast Nigeria and the mental health of heads of households. The information on depressive symptoms (as a proxy for mental health) of household heads was collected using the Centre of Epidemiological Studies Short Depression Scale (CESD-10). The information on household coordinates provided in the 2015 wave of the Nigerian General Household Survey (GHS) was used to measure households’ exposure to violent conflict through the number of conflict attacks as well as the number of fatalities within a local government area. To explore the pathways of the association between conflict and depressive symptoms, we employed mediation analysis to unpack mechanisms such as unemployment, illness or injury, and food security as potential channels through which violent conflict is associated with depressive symptoms.

Keywords:

• Terrorist attacks; Mental health; Nigeria

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 These studies focus on early-life or in utero exposure to civil conflict on outcomes such as education, health, birth weight, mortality, stature, and labour market activities.

2 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-42735414.

3 A caliphate or khilāfah is an Islamic state under the leadership of an Islamic chief Muslim ruler with the title of caliph, a person considered a politico-religious successor to the Islamic prophet Muhammad and a leader of the entire Muslim world.

4 States in north-eastern Nigeria include Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Taraba, and Yobe. However, the

northeastern states of Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa account for 80% of Boko Haram attacks (ACLED, 2017; Raleigh, Linke, Hegre, & Karlsen, 2010). At the peak of Boko Haram insurgency in 2015, 26 of the 27 local government areas (LGAs) in Benue State were either fully or partially overwhelmed by Boko Haram (Cooke & Sanderson, 2016).

5 Prior to his death, Utaz Mohammed Yusuf was arrested and detained due to his disobedience of the law and

confrontation with law enforcement authorities.

6 The 2015/16 Nigerian General Household Survey was designed by the National Bureau of Statistics of Nigeria as part of the living standards measurement survey (LSMS). The survey provides the coordinates of the sampled households which vary based on the Local Government Areas (LGA).

7 The GTD database provides a dataset which combines information from print and visual media, journals, legal documents, and other existing data sources. These are available globally from 1970–2016.

8 The measure of violent conflict is captured by the number of attacks or fatalities and vary across the LGAs. There are 774 LGAs captured in the 2015/16 Nigerian General Household Survey (GHS). The number of attacks or fatalities used in our analysis is the total attacks or fatalities across LGAs for 2015 and 2016, respectively.

9 The Local Government Area (LGA) is the smallest unit of administration, and there are 774 LGAs in Nigeria. The variation in exposure to Boko Haram conflict varies at the local government areas in Nigeria. We used log of conflicts in the analysis to reduce the variability or heteroskedasticity associated with the conflict variable.

10 Stata command for the mediation analysis is given as: medeff (regress M T x) (regress Y T M x), treat(T) mediate(M) sims (1000).

Additional information

Funding

The authors reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Joseph B. Ajefu

Joseph Ajefu is Senior Lecturer in Economics at Newcastle Business School in Northumbria University. He holds an MSc in Development Economics from the University of Birmingham and a PhD in Economics from the University of Leicester. His research interests are focused on applied econometrics, with contributions to development economics, financial economics, health economics, labour and public economics.

Soazic Elise Wang Sonne

Soazic Elise Wang Sonne is an economist with the Health, Nutrition and Population Global Practice of the World Bank Group in Washington DC, USA. Prior to that, she was a Young Professional and Africa Fellow with the Social development department of the World Bank. In 2018/2019, she was a European Investment Bank-Global Development Network (EIB-GDN) fellow in applied development finance and impact investing in Kenya for the firm SOKO.