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The association between long-distance migration and PTSD prevalence in Syrian refugees

BACKGROUND: Refugees are forced migrants but there is a large variation in the distance that refugees cover and there is a paucity in the evidence of how this may affect refugees’ health and health care needs. Objective: We investigated the association between long-distance migration and post-trauma...

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Autores principales: Eiset, Andreas Halgreen, Aoun, Michaelangelo P., Stougaard, Monica, Gottlieb, Annemarie Graa, Haddad, Ramzi S., Frydenberg, Morten, Naja, Wadih J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9137139/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35624508
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-022-03982-4
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author Eiset, Andreas Halgreen
Aoun, Michaelangelo P.
Stougaard, Monica
Gottlieb, Annemarie Graa
Haddad, Ramzi S.
Frydenberg, Morten
Naja, Wadih J.
author_facet Eiset, Andreas Halgreen
Aoun, Michaelangelo P.
Stougaard, Monica
Gottlieb, Annemarie Graa
Haddad, Ramzi S.
Frydenberg, Morten
Naja, Wadih J.
author_sort Eiset, Andreas Halgreen
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Refugees are forced migrants but there is a large variation in the distance that refugees cover and there is a paucity in the evidence of how this may affect refugees’ health and health care needs. Objective: We investigated the association between long-distance migration and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a serious psychiatric disorder associated with deteriorating mental and somatic health. METHODS: Included from 2016–2019 were adult Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Denmark that arrived up to 12 months prior to inclusion. PTSD was assessed using the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire and the estimate of association was obtained by multiply imputing missing data and adjusting for confounding by propensity score-weighting with covariates age, sex, socioeconomic status, trauma experience and general mental well-being, reporting the bootstrap 95-percentile confidence interval (95% CI). Additionally, a number of sensitivity analyses were performed. RESULTS: Included were 599 participants in Lebanon (mean age 35 years old, 73% being female) and 133 participants in Denmark (mean age 30 years old, 47% being female). After multiply imputing missing data and propensity score-weighted adjustment for confounding, migration to Denmark instead of Lebanon was associated with an increase in PTSD prevalence of 9 percentage point (95% CI [-1; 19] percentage point). CONCLUSIONS: Long-distance migration may be associated with an increase in PTSD prevalence in refugees. The migration could be an important factor to consider when assessing refugees’ and asylum seekers’ health. Practitioners should consider “long-distance migration” in refugee health screenings and in particular when assessing the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder. Future research should be designed to ultimately lead to studies of relevant interventions to lower the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder in refugees. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12888-022-03982-4.
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spelling pubmed-91371392022-05-28 The association between long-distance migration and PTSD prevalence in Syrian refugees Eiset, Andreas Halgreen Aoun, Michaelangelo P. Stougaard, Monica Gottlieb, Annemarie Graa Haddad, Ramzi S. Frydenberg, Morten Naja, Wadih J. BMC Psychiatry Research BACKGROUND: Refugees are forced migrants but there is a large variation in the distance that refugees cover and there is a paucity in the evidence of how this may affect refugees’ health and health care needs. Objective: We investigated the association between long-distance migration and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a serious psychiatric disorder associated with deteriorating mental and somatic health. METHODS: Included from 2016–2019 were adult Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Denmark that arrived up to 12 months prior to inclusion. PTSD was assessed using the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire and the estimate of association was obtained by multiply imputing missing data and adjusting for confounding by propensity score-weighting with covariates age, sex, socioeconomic status, trauma experience and general mental well-being, reporting the bootstrap 95-percentile confidence interval (95% CI). Additionally, a number of sensitivity analyses were performed. RESULTS: Included were 599 participants in Lebanon (mean age 35 years old, 73% being female) and 133 participants in Denmark (mean age 30 years old, 47% being female). After multiply imputing missing data and propensity score-weighted adjustment for confounding, migration to Denmark instead of Lebanon was associated with an increase in PTSD prevalence of 9 percentage point (95% CI [-1; 19] percentage point). CONCLUSIONS: Long-distance migration may be associated with an increase in PTSD prevalence in refugees. The migration could be an important factor to consider when assessing refugees’ and asylum seekers’ health. Practitioners should consider “long-distance migration” in refugee health screenings and in particular when assessing the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder. Future research should be designed to ultimately lead to studies of relevant interventions to lower the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder in refugees. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12888-022-03982-4. BioMed Central 2022-05-27 /pmc/articles/PMC9137139/ /pubmed/35624508 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-022-03982-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Eiset, Andreas Halgreen
Aoun, Michaelangelo P.
Stougaard, Monica
Gottlieb, Annemarie Graa
Haddad, Ramzi S.
Frydenberg, Morten
Naja, Wadih J.
The association between long-distance migration and PTSD prevalence in Syrian refugees
title The association between long-distance migration and PTSD prevalence in Syrian refugees
title_full The association between long-distance migration and PTSD prevalence in Syrian refugees
title_fullStr The association between long-distance migration and PTSD prevalence in Syrian refugees
title_full_unstemmed The association between long-distance migration and PTSD prevalence in Syrian refugees
title_short The association between long-distance migration and PTSD prevalence in Syrian refugees
title_sort association between long-distance migration and ptsd prevalence in syrian refugees
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9137139/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35624508
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-022-03982-4
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