Mental Health Care for Refugee Children in Exile

Abstract

(create) The effects of warfare and political violence on the mental health of children have received increasing attention over the last few decades. In many recent armed conflicts the majority of the victims have not been soldiers, but women and children. Even when children and their caregivers succeed in finding refuge in another country, substantial psychosocial problems often remain as a result of pre-flight experiences and the difficulties of resettlement. Scandinavian studies of the mental health of newly settled children in families from the Middle East and Latin America have yielded broadly comparable results; with 35 - 50% of children being judged as suffering from poor mental health. However, the psychosocial situation of the refugee child newly settled in exile is complex, and not all studies demonstrate such high rates of poor mental health. Studies of South-East Asian refugee children in Australia and Bosnian children in Sweden have indicated a general level of mental health which in some respects is actually better than that of the general child population in the country of reception. This chapter presents an ecological model that identifies some of the major factors that should be taken into account in the provision of the mental health care of refugee children in exile. The model distinguishes three levels of factors which can influence the well-being of children: (1) stress experienced by the children themselves; (2) available social support; (3) the societal, political and cultural context. This chapter also presents some experiences from the authors' work with refugee children, focusing on different levels of this model. The authors start with the traumatic stress approach, which has been very influential in Scandinavia. Then they discuss an alternative approach based on social support and intervention on a societal level. Finally they turn to the particular situation of refugee children that live illegally in exile, as an example of families for whom interventions on such a societal level are particularly important. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).