Defining effective care coordination for mental health referrals of refugee populations in the United States.

Refugee populations arriving to the United States report high rates of exposure to trauma and associated psychiatric distress that may necessitate referrals to mental health services. Although refugee arrivals receive a voluntary health screening, mental health screening is not routine. Public health providers report that one barrier to mental health screening concerns uncertainty about how to connect refugee patients to mental health services.

Validation of a brief mental health screener for Karen refugees in primary care.

Background: Karen refugees from Burma are one of the largest refugee groups currently resettling in the USA. Karen people have endured decades of civil war and human rights violations, leaving them more likely to develop serious mental health disorders. There is a noted lack of brief, culturally validated tools present in primary care settings for detecting posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) in Karen refugees.

War trauma and torture experiences reported during public health screening of newly resettled Karen refugees: a qualitative study.

Background: Karen refugees have suffered traumatic experiences that affect their physical and mental health in resettlement. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends assessing traumatic histories and mental health symptoms during initial public health screening. This article reports the traumatic experiences that Karen refugees were able to describe during a short screening and contributes knowledge to existing human rights documentation systems.

Characteristics of Successful and Unsuccessful Mental Health Referrals of Refugees.

In this community based participatory research study, we explored key characteristics of mental health referrals of refugees using stories of providers collected through an on-line survey. Ten coders sorted 60 stories of successful referrals and 34 stories of unsuccessful referrals into domains using the critical incident technique. Principal components analysis yielded categories of successful referrals that included: active care coordination, establishing trust, proactive resolution of barriers, and culturally responsive care.

PTSD symptom structure among West African war trauma survivors living in African refugee camps: a factor-analytic investigation.

We examined the factor structure of measured posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in a sample of West African civilian refugees who had fled the civil war in Sierra Leone between 2001 and 2006. Given that such war-affected populations are common but understudied in trauma research, our objective was to examine the similarities and differences in this factor structure compared to prevailing models of PTSD symptom structure. As part of treatment services provided in refugee camps, refugees (2,140 women, 1,662 men, 1 unknown) from Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea completed the 17 symptoms portion of the Posttraumatic Stress Diagnostic Scale (PDS).