No abstract

The past years have been characterized by a large refugee crisis across the globe. The exposure to preflight, flight, and resettlement stressors puts refugee children and their families at risk of developing emotional and behavioral disorders. A unique Western-based approach of mental health problems seems to be insufficient to address the complexity of interactions between individual vulnerabilities and more ecological surrounding systems. We looked into (1) the reasons for referral; and (2) the process diagnostic outcomes after ethnopsychiatric and psychological assessment. We conducted a thematic content analysis on 93 files of refugee children. The findings suggest that mental health care professionals need to hold into account the multiplicity and intertwining of ongoing challenges to the well-being of refugee children. The integration of a Western-based psychiatric assessment with a more ecologically based view can lead to a more culturally sensitive approach in refugee children and their families. This way, both under- and overdiagnosis of psychiatric disorders could be avoided to further optimalise mental health care in this population.

This contribution proposes an intervention methodology that provides improved access to and effectiveness of mental health care facilities in Brussels, Belgium, for children and their families with a refugee and migration background. Migration is a complex process that involves several potential risk factors, and referral to mental health facilities is often ineffective. Consequently, optimal developmental opportunities for refugee children are hampered. The intervention is underpinned by a broad-based contextual perspective that seeks to bring to the surface and tackles the many challenges faced by these families. It takes into account the unique developmental context of refugee children, as well as the interplay with broader systems.