Mental Health Risk and Protective Factors of Nigerian Male Asylum Seekers Hosted in Southern Italy: a Culturally Sensitive Quantitative Investigation

Abstract

This study provides a culturally sensitive quantitative investigation aimed at assessing the post-traumatic symptomatology, post-migratory difficulties, and resilience of 36 Nigerian male asylum seekers hosted in the province of Caserta, South Italy. A survey composed by the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire-Revised (HTQ-R), the Post-Migratory Checklist (PLMD), and the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) was administered to participants. Descriptive and correlation analyses were made in order to describe the mental health risk and protective factors and understand the relation between these. A linear regression analysis was used to evaluate the influence of post-migratory difficulties and resilience on PTSD. Stratified bivariate analyses were also computed to detect PTSD group and no-PTSD group differences about post-migration difficulties and resilience levels. Regression analysis showed that PMLD numbers significantly increased the risk of having PTSD. No significant effect emerged for the level of resilience. Statistically significant differences between the PTSD group and non-PTSD group in relation to post-migratory difficulties were also found. No differences in the resilience factors emerged. The results offer a glimpse into a specific ethnic group of asylum seekers and its mental health risks and protective factors, taking into consideration the specificities of their past and current life-story experiences. Clinical implications for professionals working in the field of forced migration will be outlined.

The Role of Emotion Regulation as a Potential Mediator between Secondary Traumatic Stress, Burnout, and Compassion Satisfaction in Professionals Working in the Forced Migration Field

“…Research with professionals working with migrants in Italy showed that operators embracing an idealized professional profile could be satisfied by their work as well as being unable to recognize physical and mental fatigue [78]. Moreover, in the field of forced migration, not only personal resources but also all relational and contextual variables such as the work climate, the surviving experience of resistance in intersubjective terms might assume an important role in preserving the professional quality of life of the operators [3,14,79]. In any case, the relationship between secondary traumatic stress and compassion satisfaction remains an interesting area which needs to be further explored.…”

Facing the Traumatic Field in the Clinical and Social Work with Forced Migrants Through a Psychodynamic Perspective: from “Refugee Trauma” to the Clinic of Social Links

“…The bonds seemed to waver, as did the spaces of thought. The operators who experienced the extent of the emotional impact, as often happens in these clinical contexts with a high degree of complexity, a real vicarious trauma (Margherita et al, 2020;Tessitore et al, 2022Tessitore et al, , 2023aTessitore et al, , 2023bTroisi et al, 2021) felt the difficulty in maintaining an identity continuity of the project. In a subsequent group meeting, which brought together all the institutional operators, we returned to this moment, through a different state of mind.…”

“…In fact, migration has been described as an experience of re-birth that re-proposes the infantile condition of child inermity (the Freudian hilflossigkeit) (Grinberg & Grinberg, 1989). In this sense, the challenges faced by the migrant related to learning the language as well as the acculturation processes can be compared to those of the infans and contain a strong traumatic potentiality, which might end up generating a deep fracture of cultural identity (Margherita & Tessitore, 2019;Tessitore et al, 2023aTessitore et al, , 2023b.…”