This past fall semester we hosted a medical speaker event with Dr. Jihane Naous, a family medicine physician at UF Health who has extensive work experience and personal exposure to healthcare within refugee communities. This blog post will summarize Dr. Naous’s presentation that she gave. Dr. Naous referred to a paper published by the American Psychiatric Association titled “Mental Health Facts on Refugees, Asylum-seekers, & Survivors of Forced Displacement.” This paper provides valuable insight into mental health assessments of refugees. Notably, the paper includes that “about one out of three asylum seekers and refugees experience high rates of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder.” This alone demonstrates the frequency, prevalence, and prioritization of mental health when treating or working with refugee populations. It's important to recognize that resettlement stressors including “insecure housing, unemployment, multiple moves with changes in neighborhoods, isolation, stressful legal issues, poor access to services, and general disadvantages in the host country” can perpetuate and exacerbate mental health issues.
Resilience, which is often overlooked, remains a critical aspect in many refugees' mentalities and actions. Dr. Naous beautifully highlights the role of resilience within these populations and those that work with them. Refugees continually face many obstacles in both pre and post resettlement environments, yet, these communities overcome challenges and remain resilient in times of despair.
Furthermore, Dr. Naous spoke about her own published research paper titled “Psychosocial wellbeing and risky health behaviors among Syrian adolescent refugees in South Beirut: a study using the HEEADSSS interviewing framework” (Rizk et al., 2023). The HEEADSSS framework includes “home, education/employment, eating, activities, drugs, sexuality, safety, and suicide/depression.” The research was conducted in a “health center in South Beirut,” and includes personal interviews with 52 Syrian adolescent refugees, ages ranging from 14 to 21. The study included 34 males and 18 female participants. Some interesting results included that 73.1% of participants were not attending school, 65.7% had major depressive disorders, and 63.5% screened positive for behavioral problems. Additionally, “smoking and ever been touched in an unwanted way were found to be associated with depression” (Rizk et al., 2023).
A primary conclusion from this research paper is that “interventions need to be implemented as early as possible in the refugees’ journey to help them cope and gain resilience.” As an organization dedicated to serving refugees it is important that we engage in practices to help support the youth during their journey. Overall, I think it is valuable to recognize the stigma surrounding mental health and ensure that our actions and words do not contribute to it and instead help to subside it.
Citations
Rizk, Y., Hoteit, R., Khater, B., & Naous, J. (2023). Psychosocial wellbeing and risky health behaviors among Syrian adolescent refugees in South Beirut: A study using the HEEADSSS interviewing framework. Frontiers in Psychology, 14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1019269
Mental Health Facts on Refugees, Asylum-seekers, & Survivors of Forced Displacement