After years of emphasis on pre-migration trauma as the major determinant of refugee mental health, researchers have begun to explore the effects of post-migration stressors on refugees’ distress. However, few studies have brought together refugees’ emic understandings of the effects of economic stressors on their mental health with quantitative data sets to further explore the salience of stress processes as an explanatory mechanism. In qualitative interviews, 41 percent of 290 recently resettled adult refugees noted that economic stressors were a major source of distress and described pathways through which these stressors negatively influenced their mental health by limiting their ability to learn English, obtain meaningful employment, access health care, maintain contact with their families, and integrate into their communities. In structural equation modeling of quantitative data, we tested several possible hypotheses that emerged from the qualitative findings. We find that post-migration economic stressors mediated the relationship between migration-related trauma and post-migration emotional distress and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. These findings provide empirical support for stress proliferation as a mechanism through which trauma exposure contributes to distress.

经过多年强调移民前创伤是难民心理健康的主要决定因素，研究人员开始探索移民后压力源对难民痛苦的影响。然而，很少有研究将难民对经济压力对其心理健康影响的普遍理解与定量数据集结合起来，以进一步探索压力过程作为解释机制的显着性。在定性访谈中，最近重新安置的 290 名成年难民中有 41% 指出，经济压力源是痛苦的主要来源，并描述了这些压力源通过限制他们学习英语、获得有意义的工作、获得医疗保健的能力，从而对他们的心理健康产生负面影响的途径，与他们的家人保持联系，并融入他们的社区。在定量数据的结构方程建模中，我们测试了从定性发现中出现的几个可能的假设。我们发现，移民后经济压力在移民相关创伤与移民后情绪困扰和创伤后应激障碍 (PTSD) 症状之间的关系中起中介作用。这些发现为压力扩散作为创伤暴露导致痛苦的机制提供了经验支持。