Refugees Case Study

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Refugees are a vulnerable and marginalized population who have high rates of emotional distress that are often unidentified and untreated by the current mental health system. In 2013, nearly 2,500 refugees displaced from their home countries by persecution and armed conflict were resettled in North Carolina. Using the standardized Refugee Health Screener-15 as a mental health assessment tool, two research questions were studied: (1) What percentage of refugees resettled by Church World Service in Durham and Orange Counties in North Carolina show clinically significant levels of mental health distress? and (2) To what degree does level of mental health distress among refugees vary by length of time since resettlement? Screenings were completed …show more content…

refugee program began in 1975 to accommodate refugees from Vietnam after the fall of Saigon (National Child Traumatic Stress Network [NCTSN], 2005). At the end of 2012, 45.2 million people around the world were displaced as a result of persecution, conflict, and violence (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR], 2013). In fiscal year 2013, almost 70,000 (69,926) refugees arrived in the United States; 2,419 of them were resettled in North Carolina (UNHCR, 2013). A refugee is a person who has left his or her native country and cannot or will not return due to war, violence, or persecution (United Nations, 1951). The refugee must have a rational fear of persecution for membership in a specific social group, nationality, political opinion, race or religion. In 2012, the primary reasons for refugees fleeing their home country were ethnic and tribal conflict, religious persecution, and war violence (UNHRC, …show more content…

As such, it is relevant to review previous methods of needs assessments utilized with refugee populations. In many states, mental health screenings are not formally conducted during the resettlement process. In North Carolina, providers and resettlement agencies have been reluctant to administer mental health screenings because there are few - if any - mental health services available to refugees if a need were to be identified. Time constraints, costs, lack of available interpreters, and an inability to follow-up with newly arrived individuals also contribute to the scarcity of available screenings (Pathways to Wellness, 2011). A number of mental health screening tools have been developed to assess the magnitude of this gap in services for refugees but none have proved comprehensive yet brief enough to ascertain the immediate mental health needs of refugees (The New Mexico Refugee Symptoms Checklist-121; The Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25; The Posttraumatic Symptom Scale-Self Report). Most recently, however, the Pathways to Wellness Project (2011) developed the Refugee Health Screener – 15 (RHS-15) for refugee resettlement agencies and has conducted multiple studies to ensure its reliability and validity. Due to the brevity, cost-effectiveness, and reliability of this measure, the

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