Research on psychopathological consequences of refugeeism.

Abstract

The study examined mental and psychopathological consequences of refugeeism and included (109) refugees from refugee camp in Krnjaca. Their reactions were compared with the reactions of (70) somatically injured patients from Orthopedic Hospital of the Clinical Centre in Belgrade and subjects (105) from Belgrade denying any traumatic experience whatsoever. Apart from the questionnaire on socio-demographic features, subjects were asked to provide answers to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD-10) scale, Brief Eysenck's Personality Inventory, Family Homogeneity Inventory and Impact of Events Scale. By implementation of appropriate statistical procedures (variance analysis), the significance of differences among certain features within the experimental group of refugees was examined, as well as the difference concerning presence of mental and psychopathological features among all three subgroups. It was determined that within the refugee group, males more significantly and more frequently reacted with PTSD symptoms, as well as with signs of general neuroticism and that married refugees more frequently presented with PTSD symptoms. In comparison to non-refugees, refugees more significantly and more frequently present with PTSD symptoms, which is probably caused by PTSD chronicity in this category of subjects. Subjects denying any significant traumatic experience in their lives presented with symptoms of general neuroticism more than the rest of examinees. This is an interesting finding that can be explained by the fact that the same group achieved the highest values on the extraversion scale (using the same Eysenck instrument), or may be correlated to the increase of neurotic reactions in the whole population of Serbia and Montenegro. The above mentioned and other results were compared to the findings of similar researches performed by other authors.