School and Community-Based Interventions for Refugee and Asylum Seeking Children: A Systematic Review

Abstract

BackgroundResearch for effective psychological interventions for refugee and asylum-seeking children has intensified. The need for interventions in environments more easily accessed by children and families is especially relevant for newly arrived populations. This paper reviews the literature on school and community-based interventions aimed at reducing psychological disorders in refugee and asylum-seeking children.Methods and FindingsComprehensive searches were conducted in seven databases and further information was obtained through searching reference lists, grey literature, and contacting experts in the field. Studies were included if they reported on the efficacy of a school or community-based mental health intervention for refugee or asylum-seeking children. Two independent reviewers made the final study selection, extracted data, and reached consensus on study quality. Results were summarized descriptively. The marked heterogeneity of studies excluded conducting a meta-analysis but study effect-sizes were calculated where possible. Twenty one studies met inclusion criteria for the review reporting on interventions for approximately 1800 refugee children. Fourteen studies were carried out in high-income countries in either a school (n = 11) or community (n = 3) setting and seven studies were carried out in refugee camps. Interventions were either primarily focused on the verbal processing of past experiences (n = 9), or on an array of creative art techniques (n = 7) and others used a combination of these interventions (n = 5). While both intervention types reported significant changes in symptomatology, effect sizes ranged from 0.31 to 0.93 and could mainly be calculated for interventions focusing on the verbal processing of past experiences.ConclusionsOnly a small number of studies fulfilled inclusion criteria and the majority of these were in the school setting. The findings suggest that interventions delivered within the school setting can be successful in helping children overcome difficulties associated with forced migration.

The Art Room: An evaluation of a targeted school-based group intervention for students with emotional and behavioural difficulties

“…Indicated prevention programmes for depression and conduct problems have showed some positive results (Domitrovich & Greenberg, 2000). Empirically validated treatments for children and adolescents differ for various disorders (Chambless & Ollendick, 2001;Jaycox, Kataoka, Stein, Langley, & Wong, 2012;Stein et al, 2003) and for diverse groups of children (Tyrer & Fazel, 2014). Therefore, although there are a number of probably efficacious interventions, there remains the need for evaluating ongoing interventions for children's mental health and to identify sustainable models of service development and delivery.…”

A moment of change: Facilitating refugee children's mental health in UK schools

“…This raises the interesting question as to whether working within the school context can specifically assist in peer-related psychological difficulties. A systematic review of studies of schoolbased interventions for refugee children has highlighted the broad range of different mental health interventions that have been used with varying impact on quantitative measures of mental health (Tyrer and Fazel, 2014). The interventions included individual, group and multimodal (those intervening in a number of areas relevant to the children -such as school, family and individual) interventions, although those with the greatest evidence-base were those that treated post-traumatic stress disorder with verbal exposure to the previous events by utilising either cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) or narrative exposure therapy (NET).…”

African Refugee Youths’ Stories of Surviving Trauma and Transition in U.S. Public Schools

“…For example, Narrative Therapy (NET; Ruf et al, 2010) acknowledges the narrative tradition common to most refugee cultures and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT; Hinton et al, 2005) or Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) was found to be effective (both individual and group interventions) in the treatment of anxiety, PTSD, depression, peer-problems and functional disturbances (Pacione et al, 2013;Slobodin & de Jong, 2015;Tyrer & Fazel, 2014). As brought forward in this study, parents or caretakers exposed to similar traumatic encounters may suffer similar psychological distress that affects the entire family's emotional and physical wellbeing.…”

“…As brought forward in this study, parents or caretakers exposed to similar traumatic encounters may suffer similar psychological distress that affects the entire family's emotional and physical wellbeing. Thus, comprehensive or multimodal interventions that aim to concurrently address issues of psychological functioning, physical health and ongoing psychological difficulties with refugee students and their families (Tyrer & Fazel, 2014) should also be considered, thereby strengthening intrafamilial coping resources.To this end, within schools, school social workers, staff/teachers, lay therapists or cultural brokers could be trained to promote mental wellbeing by creating a caring and supporting environment and through implementation of preventative and efficacious psychological functioning (Tyrer & Fazel, 2014).…”