12.L. Workshop: Addressing mental health needs in the context of mass immigration
Authors:   Organised by: EUPHA Public mental health section,   Chair persons: Marit Sijbrandij - Netherlands, Jutta Lindert – EUPHA-PMH
Published: October 2020

Over the past decade, the global population of forcibly displaced people reaching a record high by growing to over 70 million in 2018. The largest group of refugees worldwide currently are the Syrians, and most of them have fled to countries neighboring Syria (e.g., Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon), whereas smaller but significant numbers of refugees fled to European countries. Over 50% of Syrian refugees are children, in many cases unaccompanied by their family. Increased rates of common mental disorders, including anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have been documented in various refugee populations. Much less is known about the prevalence of other common mental health problems, such as substance use. In order to effectively address the mental health needs of Syrian refugees, increasing knowledge about self-identified problems and cultural idioms of distress within the Syrian community is imperative. This may also facilitate the development of effective mental health awareness programs within refugee communities.

Further, the refugee crisis imposes highly challenging demands on health systems in Europe and the Middle East. Within the Middle East, there is a great lack of mental health workforce, and limited availability of evidence-based interventions. Within Europe, specialized mental health care services for refugee populations are available, yet the number of Arabic-speaking professionals is very limited. Other barriers to seeking and continuing mental health care for refugees include the use of interpreters, lack of culturally adapted interventions for a range of mental health problems, and stigma within refugee communities.

Learning from evidence from low- and middle-income settings, task-sharing interventions delivered by non-professional helpers in the community instead of within specialized mental health care facilitate access to care. Within European settings, they can be successfully integrated within stepped care models used as a public mental health care strategy to reduce costs and increase mental health care use and continuation for refugee populations.

In order to address the mental health needs of Syrian refugees, increasing knowledge about self-identified problems and cultural idioms of distress within the Syrian community is imperative. In addition, scalable task-sharing interventions addressing these problems should be developed and evaluated.

This international workshop will focus on 1) self-identified problems and idioms of distress within the Syrian refugee community to inform the development of targeted psychosocial interventions; and 2) the effects of novel scalable psychosocial interventions to address common mental disorders across the health systems within Europe (Turkey and the Netherlands) and the Middle East (Jordan). The presenters are Naser Morina (Switzerland), Jutta Lindert (Germany), Richard Bryant (Australia), Dr. Ceren Acarturk (Turkey) and Marit Sijbrandij (the Netherlands).

Key messages

Scalable psychosocial interventions can successfully be implemented across refugee settings in the Netherlands, Turkey, the Netherlands and Jordan to address common mental disorders. To address major mental health concerns within refugee communities, culturally concepts of distress and general wellbeing indicators should be considered.