War has accompanied closely the history of homo sapiens and continues to be a source of worry in the modern world. Interest in the mental health dimensions of wars has increased in the past four decades and has paralleled advances in field research. Lebanon, a hitherto peaceful republic, was ravaged by what has come to be known as the Lebanon Wars which started in 1975 and our group (IDRAAC) embarked on studying a little researched population: civilians in war. We have conducted both cross sectional and prospective studies since 1980 on children, adolescents and adults. More recently we have included a new set of civilians from a neighbouring country: SyriWe established through our successive studies that war, in civilians, was clearly a major predictor not only with reference to the first onset but also with reference to the severity of mental disorders. Furthermore, the mental health of civilians got worse with repeated exposure to war: they do not get used to or get 'hardened' with more exposure. Suicidal behaviour was also related to exposure to war, mediated through mental disorders, independent of the time period (during or after war), and exacerbated in the presence of pre-war impulse control disorder. We found too that, in the acute aftermath of wars, while mental disorders in children and adolescents peak immediately, they gradually decrease in their prevalence but with a clear exception: impulse control disorders. Quite importantly, post-war mental disorders were linked to intra-familial stressors such as exposure to family violence, and not only to direct witnessing of war events, highlighting our repeated finding, in all our studies, that the evaluation of the effect of war on mental health should always include the assessment not only of pre-war disorders but also of childhood adversities and other traumata in the life of the individuals. Moreover, we found that the relation of war to mental health disorders does not dwindle with time: war echoes continue into older age. Our large scale intervention studies are teaching us to explore new dimensions in mental health, namely personal competence and other constructs of resilience. Reflecting on our findings, it is hoped that, in addition to physical disabilities, policy makers and world leaders keep in mind the real, costly scars of wars, namely the long term mental health consequences of wars, and include them on their various balance sheets