YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon — A study of women displaced by Cameroon’s Anglophone crisis found an exceptionally high burden of post-traumatic stress symptoms, highlighting needs that humanitarian responses cannot meet through shelter and food alone.
Researchers recruited 133 women aged 18 to 65 through two humanitarian organisations in Yaoundé. All had left the conflict-affected North-West or South-West regions and had lived away from their place of origin for at least three months.
Using the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5, 127 participants—95.5%—scored at or above 31, the study’s screening threshold for probable post-traumatic stress disorder. A screening score is not a clinical diagnosis, and the rate should not be generalised to every displaced woman in Cameroon.
The sample was small, selected through aid organisations and assessed at one point in time. Women connected with those organisations may have different experiences from people outside formal support. Self-report can also be affected by memory, current stress and the way questions are understood across languages and cultures.
Within those limits, the research tried to distinguish types of exposure. Personally experienced traumatic events tied to the Anglophone crisis predicted greater symptom severity. A stronger personal “sense of coherence”—the feeling that life remains understandable, manageable and meaningful—was associated with fewer symptoms.
Together, those variables explained only 9% of the difference in symptom scores. That modest share is crucial. Recovery cannot be reduced to teaching a woman to interpret adversity more positively while conflict, poverty, insecure housing and threat continue around her.
The Anglophone crisis escalated in 2017 after disputes over the marginalisation of English-speaking regions developed into armed conflict between state forces and separatists. Civilians have faced killings, abductions, sexual violence, destroyed homes and repeated displacement.
Mental-health support should therefore combine evidence-based trauma care with practical stability. Women need confidential services, trained clinicians, childcare during appointments, protection from gender-based violence and referral systems that remain available after emergency funding ends.
Community support also requires careful interpretation. Displacement can fragment the very networks that once provided belonging. A woman may be physically surrounded by others yet separated from the people, language or institutions she trusted.
The study does not show that PTSD is inevitable, nor that resilience is a personality women either possess or lack. It shows a group carrying heavy, measurable distress after direct exposure to violence. The appropriate response is not admiration for endurance. It is investment in conditions that make recovery possible—and political action to reduce the trauma still being produced.
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