Background:
Providing adequate living conditions for forcibly displaced people represents a significant challenge for host countries such as Germany. This study explores refugee mental health’s reciprocal, dynamic relationship with post-migration living conditions and social support.
Methods:
The study sample included 325 Arabic- or Farsi-speaking asylum seekers and refugees residing in Germany since 2014 and seeking mental health treatment. Associations between reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress and depression and the subjective quality of living conditions and perceived social support were analyzed using a two-level approach including multiple linear regression and network analyses.
Results:
Post-migration quality of living conditions and perceived social support were significantly associated with negative mental health outcomes on both levels. In the network, both post-migration factors were negatively connected with overlapping symptoms of psychiatric disorders, representing potential target symptoms for psychological treatment.
Conclusion:
Post-migration quality of living conditions and social support are important factors for refugee mental health and should be targeted by various actors fostering mental well-being and integration.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.