Ethical Considerations For Social Workers Working with Muslim Refugees.

In 2016 almost 39,000 Muslim refugees entered the United States, representing a record of admissions during a time of elevated anti-Muslim political rhetoric and public sentiment. Anti-Muslim attitudes and policies can affect refugees' ability to successfully resettle and contribute to decreased health status. Given the current social and political moment there is an ethical imperative for social workers to engage in resistance to anti-Muslim sentiment and the encoding of Islamophobia in resettlement policy.

Exploring the mental health effects of political trauma with newly arrived refugees.

We explored the mental health effects of war trauma and torture as described by 111 refugees newly arrived in the United States. We used ethnocultural methodologies to inform 13 culture-specific focus groups with refugees from Bhutan (34), Burma (23), Ethiopia (27), and Somalia (27). Contrary to the belief that stigma prevents refugees from discussing mental health distress, participants readily described complex conceptualizations of degrees of mental health distress informed by political context, observation of symptoms, cultural idioms, and functional impairment.