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Refugees’ Agency: On Resistance, Resilience, and Resources

This study set out to answer the question ‘Which kinds of agency do refugees perform when dealing with mental health problems of themselves and their children?’. Aiming to gain more insight in why it seems harder for refugee parents and minors than for the native population to talk to health profess...

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Autores principales: Renkens, José, Rommes, Els, van den Muijsenbergh, Maria
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8775689/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35055628
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19020806
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author Renkens, José
Rommes, Els
van den Muijsenbergh, Maria
author_facet Renkens, José
Rommes, Els
van den Muijsenbergh, Maria
author_sort Renkens, José
collection PubMed
description This study set out to answer the question ‘Which kinds of agency do refugees perform when dealing with mental health problems of themselves and their children?’. Aiming to gain more insight in why it seems harder for refugee parents and minors than for the native population to talk to health professionals about their mental health and wellbeing, we combined two theoretical notions of agency to investigate a broad spectrum of informants’ behaviour. We conducted 25 interviews with 30 refugees from 8 countries (Syria, Yemen, Iran, Afghanistan, Armenia, Eritrea, Turkish Kurdistan, Vietnam), whose Dutch residence permit varied from 26 years to less than one year. Data were analysed through open and axial coding, followed by pattern analyses. Although sometimes refugees seek (mental) healthcare, at other times they show agency by doing ‘nothing’ or by deliberately using distracting activities to deal with severe stress. Making use of resources available to them, oftentimes refugees show agency in ways that are less visible to healthcare professionals, by surviving, showing resilience, and suffering. In these cases, we think healthcare for refugees should intervene in a non-medical way, e.g., by supporting them to obtain resources that help refugees to (re)gain agency.
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spelling pubmed-87756892022-01-21 Refugees’ Agency: On Resistance, Resilience, and Resources Renkens, José Rommes, Els van den Muijsenbergh, Maria Int J Environ Res Public Health Article This study set out to answer the question ‘Which kinds of agency do refugees perform when dealing with mental health problems of themselves and their children?’. Aiming to gain more insight in why it seems harder for refugee parents and minors than for the native population to talk to health professionals about their mental health and wellbeing, we combined two theoretical notions of agency to investigate a broad spectrum of informants’ behaviour. We conducted 25 interviews with 30 refugees from 8 countries (Syria, Yemen, Iran, Afghanistan, Armenia, Eritrea, Turkish Kurdistan, Vietnam), whose Dutch residence permit varied from 26 years to less than one year. Data were analysed through open and axial coding, followed by pattern analyses. Although sometimes refugees seek (mental) healthcare, at other times they show agency by doing ‘nothing’ or by deliberately using distracting activities to deal with severe stress. Making use of resources available to them, oftentimes refugees show agency in ways that are less visible to healthcare professionals, by surviving, showing resilience, and suffering. In these cases, we think healthcare for refugees should intervene in a non-medical way, e.g., by supporting them to obtain resources that help refugees to (re)gain agency. MDPI 2022-01-12 /pmc/articles/PMC8775689/ /pubmed/35055628 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19020806 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Renkens, José
Rommes, Els
van den Muijsenbergh, Maria
Refugees’ Agency: On Resistance, Resilience, and Resources
title Refugees’ Agency: On Resistance, Resilience, and Resources
title_full Refugees’ Agency: On Resistance, Resilience, and Resources
title_fullStr Refugees’ Agency: On Resistance, Resilience, and Resources
title_full_unstemmed Refugees’ Agency: On Resistance, Resilience, and Resources
title_short Refugees’ Agency: On Resistance, Resilience, and Resources
title_sort refugees’ agency: on resistance, resilience, and resources
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8775689/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35055628
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19020806
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