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Mental health literacy of resettled Iraqi refugees in Australia: knowledge about posttraumatic stress disorder and beliefs about helpfulness of interventions
BACKGROUND: Resettled refugees are a particularly vulnerable group. They have very high levels of mental health problems, in particular, trauma-related disorders, but very low uptake of mental health care. Evidence suggests that poor “mental health literacy”, namely, poor knowledge and understanding...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4240884/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25403955 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-014-0320-x |
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author | Slewa-Younan, Shameran Mond, Jonathan Bussion, Elise Mohammad, Yaser Uribe Guajardo, Maria Gabriela Smith, Mitchell Milosevic, Diana Lujic, Sanja Jorm, Anthony Francis |
author_facet | Slewa-Younan, Shameran Mond, Jonathan Bussion, Elise Mohammad, Yaser Uribe Guajardo, Maria Gabriela Smith, Mitchell Milosevic, Diana Lujic, Sanja Jorm, Anthony Francis |
author_sort | Slewa-Younan, Shameran |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Resettled refugees are a particularly vulnerable group. They have very high levels of mental health problems, in particular, trauma-related disorders, but very low uptake of mental health care. Evidence suggests that poor “mental health literacy”, namely, poor knowledge and understanding of the nature and treatment of mental health problems is a major factor in low or inappropriate treatment-seeking among individuals with mental health problems. This study used a culturally adapted Mental Health Literacy Survey method to determine knowledge of, and beliefs about, helpfulness of treatment interventions and providers for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) amongst resettled Iraqi refugees. METHODS: 225 resettled Iraqi refugees in Western Sydney attending the Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP), federally funded English language tuition, were surveyed. A vignette of a fictional character meeting diagnostic criteria for PTSD was presented followed by the Mental Health Literacy Survey. PTSD symptomology was measured using the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire part IV (HTQ part IV), with Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) used to measure levels of general psychological distress. RESULTS: Only 14.2% of participants labelled the problem as PTSD, with “a problem with fear” being the modal response (41.8%). A total of 84.9% respondents indicated that seeing a psychiatrist would be helpful, followed by reading the Koran or Bible selected by 79.2% of those surveyed. There was some variation in problem recognition and helpfulness of treatment, most notably influenced by the length of resettlement in Australia of the respondents. CONCLUSIONS: These findings have important implications for the design and implementation of mental health promotion and treatment programs for resettled refugees and those who work with them. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12888-014-0320-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4240884 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-42408842014-11-23 Mental health literacy of resettled Iraqi refugees in Australia: knowledge about posttraumatic stress disorder and beliefs about helpfulness of interventions Slewa-Younan, Shameran Mond, Jonathan Bussion, Elise Mohammad, Yaser Uribe Guajardo, Maria Gabriela Smith, Mitchell Milosevic, Diana Lujic, Sanja Jorm, Anthony Francis BMC Psychiatry Research Article BACKGROUND: Resettled refugees are a particularly vulnerable group. They have very high levels of mental health problems, in particular, trauma-related disorders, but very low uptake of mental health care. Evidence suggests that poor “mental health literacy”, namely, poor knowledge and understanding of the nature and treatment of mental health problems is a major factor in low or inappropriate treatment-seeking among individuals with mental health problems. This study used a culturally adapted Mental Health Literacy Survey method to determine knowledge of, and beliefs about, helpfulness of treatment interventions and providers for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) amongst resettled Iraqi refugees. METHODS: 225 resettled Iraqi refugees in Western Sydney attending the Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP), federally funded English language tuition, were surveyed. A vignette of a fictional character meeting diagnostic criteria for PTSD was presented followed by the Mental Health Literacy Survey. PTSD symptomology was measured using the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire part IV (HTQ part IV), with Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) used to measure levels of general psychological distress. RESULTS: Only 14.2% of participants labelled the problem as PTSD, with “a problem with fear” being the modal response (41.8%). A total of 84.9% respondents indicated that seeing a psychiatrist would be helpful, followed by reading the Koran or Bible selected by 79.2% of those surveyed. There was some variation in problem recognition and helpfulness of treatment, most notably influenced by the length of resettlement in Australia of the respondents. CONCLUSIONS: These findings have important implications for the design and implementation of mental health promotion and treatment programs for resettled refugees and those who work with them. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12888-014-0320-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2014-11-18 /pmc/articles/PMC4240884/ /pubmed/25403955 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-014-0320-x Text en © Slewa-Younan et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Slewa-Younan, Shameran Mond, Jonathan Bussion, Elise Mohammad, Yaser Uribe Guajardo, Maria Gabriela Smith, Mitchell Milosevic, Diana Lujic, Sanja Jorm, Anthony Francis Mental health literacy of resettled Iraqi refugees in Australia: knowledge about posttraumatic stress disorder and beliefs about helpfulness of interventions |
title | Mental health literacy of resettled Iraqi refugees in Australia: knowledge about posttraumatic stress disorder and beliefs about helpfulness of interventions |
title_full | Mental health literacy of resettled Iraqi refugees in Australia: knowledge about posttraumatic stress disorder and beliefs about helpfulness of interventions |
title_fullStr | Mental health literacy of resettled Iraqi refugees in Australia: knowledge about posttraumatic stress disorder and beliefs about helpfulness of interventions |
title_full_unstemmed | Mental health literacy of resettled Iraqi refugees in Australia: knowledge about posttraumatic stress disorder and beliefs about helpfulness of interventions |
title_short | Mental health literacy of resettled Iraqi refugees in Australia: knowledge about posttraumatic stress disorder and beliefs about helpfulness of interventions |
title_sort | mental health literacy of resettled iraqi refugees in australia: knowledge about posttraumatic stress disorder and beliefs about helpfulness of interventions |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4240884/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25403955 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-014-0320-x |
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