Resilience and coping with stressful situations play an important role in war-related traumas. In the documentary, the school became one of the few relatively safe places that children turned to during the wartime. The act of attending school was a source of stability and continuity in children daily lives. Extracurricular activities at school such music, sports and arts have a powerful therapeutic effect to help children cope with stressful experiences as well as to distract from painful feelings. One of the most common coping strategies for Lost Boys was avoidance— putting thoughts of their family out of their mind. Distraction, such reading the Bible or playing with other children or focusing on schoolwork kept Lost Boys from thinking about their missing families. With acceptance, the youth made a cognitive shift from the anxiety of events that they can’t control such as war and inability to rejoin their families, to things that they can control. With support from the elders and peers who shared their experiences of separation, lost, and trauma, Lost Boys focused on the future, on getting an education. …show more content…
Religion helped the youth to find meaning in their suffering. Youth used active coping strategies to try to obtain information about their families to resolve the issue of ambiguous loss. Once Lost Boys learned to read and write they were sending letters via the Red Cross addressed to their parents in their village. Anytime someone new has arrived in the refugee camp from their home area, they asked if they knew anything about their family