TY - JOUR T1 - Gender, mental health and resilience in armed conflict: listening to life stories of internally displaced women in Colombia JF - BMJ Global Health JO - BMJ Global Health DO - 10.1136/bmjgh-2021-005770 VL - 6 IS - 10 SP - e005770 AU - Emilia Zamora-Moncayo AU - Rochelle A. Burgess AU - Laura Fonseca AU - Mónica González-Gort AU - Ritsuko Kakuma Y1 - 2021/10/01 UR - http://gh.bmj.com/content/6/10/e005770.abstract N2 - For over 60 years, Colombia has endured violent civil conflict forcibly displacing more than 8 million people. Recent efforts have begun to explore mental health consequences of these contexts, with an emphasis on national surveys. To date few Colombian studies explore mental health and well-being from a lived experience perspective. Those that do, overlook processes that enable survival. In response to this gap, we conducted a life history study of seven internally displaced Colombian women in the Cundinamarca department, analysing 18 interview sessions and 36 hours of transcripts. A thematic network analysis, informed by Latin-American perspectives on gender and critical resilience frameworks, explored women’s coping strategies in response to conflict-driven hardships related to mental well-being. Analysis illuminated that: (1) the gendered impacts of the armed conflict on women’s emotional well-being work through exacerbating historical gendered violence and inequality, intensifying existing emotional health challenges, and (2) coping strategies reflect women’s ability to mobilise cognitive, bodied, social, material and symbolic power and resources. Our findings highlight that the sociopolitical contexts of women’s lives are inseparable from their efforts to achieve mental well-being, and the value of deep narrative and historical work to capturing the complexity of women’s experiences within conflict settings. We suggest the importance of social interventions to support the mental health of women in conflict settings, in order to centre the social and political contexts faced by such marginalised groups within efforts to improve mental health.All data relevant to the study are included in the article or uploaded as supplementary information. Given the sensitive nature of the topics explored, this data is not available for public reuse, and all data relevant to this study are presented in a safe way with this article. For any questions relating to the data, please contact the corresponding author. ER -