Abstract
While scholarly literature indicates that both refugee and non-refugee migrant young people display increased levels of psychosocial vulnerability, studies comparing the mental health of the two groups remain scarce. This study aims to further the existing evidence by examining refugee and non-refugee migrants’ mental health, in relation to their migration history and resettlement conditions. The mental health of 883 refugee and 483 non-refugee migrants (mean age 15.41, range 11-24, 45.9% girls, average length of stay in the host country 3.75 years) in five European countries was studied in their relation to family separation, daily material stress and perceived discrimination in resettlement. All participants reported high levels of post-traumatic stress symptoms. Family separation predicted post-trauma and internalizing behavioral difficulties only in refugees. Daily material stress related to lower levels of overall well-being in all participants, and higher levels of internalizing and externalizing behavioral difficulties in refugees. Perceived discrimination was associated with increased levels of mental health problems for refugees and non-refugee migrants. The relationship between perceived discrimination and post-traumatic stress symptoms in non-refugee migrants, together with the high levels of post-traumatic stress symptoms in this subsample, raises important questions on the nature of trauma exposure in non-refugee migrants, as well as the ways in which experiences of discrimination may interact with other traumatic stressors in predicting mental health.
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Acknowledgements
First and foremost, we owe thanks to the young people, their teachers and school staff who committed to this research project with great care and sincerity. We are furthermore grateful to all of our RefugeesWellSchool consortium partners, for the durable and thought-provoking collaboration of which this article is an outcome. In name of the first author: Dank je, Lucia, voor alles waar dit artikel voor staat.
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CS was responsible for study supervision, school and participant recruitment and data collection in the Belgium research context, participated in the performance and interpretation of and drafted this manuscript; AV coordinated the overall RefugeesWellSchool study, co-supervised this study, participated in the design of the data and analyses, and reviewed different drafts of the manuscript; ID (Ines Devlieger) designed and performed the statistical analyses, advised and assisted in their interpretation, and wrote the paragraphs on “Analysis” and “Measurement Invariance and Fit”; SA was responsible for study supervision, school and participant recruitment and data collection in the Finnish research context, and reviewed different drafts of the manuscript; AA was responsible for study supervision, school and participant recruitment and data collection in the Norwegian research context; ND was responsible for study supervision, school and participant recruitment and data collection in the Swedish research context, participated in the design of the data for this study and reviewed different drafts of the manuscript; PKH was responsible for study supervision, school and participant recruitment and data collection in the Norwegian research context, and reviewed different drafts of the manuscript; RK was responsible for study supervision, school and participant recruitment and data collection in the Finnish research context, participated in the design of the data for this study and reviewed different drafts of the manuscript; NLP was responsible for study supervision, school and participant recruitment and data collection in the Danish research context, participated in the design of the data for this study and reviewed different drafts of the manuscript; MO supervised the study and data collection in the Norwegian research context, participated in the design of the data for this study, and reviewed different drafts of the manuscript; FO was responsible for study supervision, school and participant recruitment and data collection in the Swedish research context, and reviewed different drafts of the manuscript; KP was responsible for study supervision, school and participant recruitment and data collection in the Finnish research context, and reviewed different drafts of the manuscript; AS was responsible for study supervision in the Swedish research context; MS was responsible for study supervision in the Danish research context and reviewed different drafts of the manuscript; SSJ was responsible for study supervision in the Danish research context and reviewed different drafts of the manuscript; ES reviewed different drafts of the manuscript; CW participated in the design and supervision of the overall RefugeesWellSchool study of which this study forms part; ID (Ilse Derluyn) supervised the RefugeesWellSchool study and reviewed different drafts of the manuscript; HC co-supervised the implementation of the RWS study in the Belgium research context and participated in editing of all drafts of the manuscript; LDH was responsible for study supervision in the Belgian research context, participated in design of this study, the analysis, in the interpretation of research results, the writing and substantial editing of all drafts of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Funding
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 754849.
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The authors declare no competing interests.
Ethical Approval
Ethics approval for the overall RefugeesWellSchool project was granted by the University of Ghent’s Ethics Commission. Additionally, each country involved in the research obtained ethical approval from their respective national Ethics Commission.
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Informed consent was obtained for young people and their parents, in accordance with national ethical guidelines on conducting research with minors.
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Appendix: A Measures, Items and Corresponding Scoring
Appendix: A Measures, Items and Corresponding Scoring
Measure | Items | Response options | Scoring |
|---|---|---|---|
Family Separation | Where you ever separated from family members during your migration to this country? | Yes | 1 |
No | 0 | ||
Overall Well-being | How would you rate your overall well-being? | Very bad | 1 |
Bad | 2 | ||
Normal | 3 | ||
Good | 4 | ||
Very Good | 5 | ||
CRIES-8 (Perrin et al., 2005) | Do you think about it [stressful life event] even when you don’t mean to? | Not at all | 0 |
Do you try to remove it [stressful life event] from your memory? | Rarely | 1 | |
Do have waves of strong feelings about it [stressful life event]? | Sometimes | 3 | |
Do you stay away from reminders of it [stressful life event]? (e.g., places, situations) | Often | 5 | |
Do you try not to talk about it [stressful life event]? | |||
Do you pictures about it [stressful life event] pop into your mind? | |||
Do other things keep making you think about it [stressful life event]? | |||
Do you try not to think about it [stressful life event]? | |||
I try to be nice to other people. I care about their feelings | Not true | 0 | |
I am restless, I cannot stay still for long | Somewhat true | 1 | |
I get a lot of headaches, stomach-aches or sickness | Certainly true | 2 | |
I usually share with others (e.g., food, games, pens) | |||
I get very angry and often lose my temper | |||
I am usually on my own. I generally do things alone or keep to myself | |||
I usually do as I am told | |||
I worry a lot | |||
I am helpful if someone is hurt, upset or feeling ill | |||
I am constantly fidgeting or squirming | |||
I have one good friend or more | |||
I fight a lot, I can make other people do what I want | |||
I am often unhappy, sad or tearful | |||
Other people my age generally like me | |||
I am easily distracted, I find it difficult to concentrate | |||
I am nervous in new situations, I easily lose confidence | |||
I am kind to younger children | |||
I am often accused of lying or cheating | |||
Other children or young people pick on me or bully me | |||
I often volunteer to help others (parents, teachers, peers) | |||
I think before I do things | |||
I take things that are not mine from home, school or elsewhere | |||
I get on better with adults than with people my own age | |||
I have many fears, I am easily scared | |||
I finish the work I’m doing, my attention is good | |||
Daily material stress (Vervliet et al., unpublished) | I have enough food to eat | Never | 1 |
I have enough clothing | Sometimes | 2 | |
I have enough money | Often | 3 | |
I have an ok place to live | Always | 4 | |
I have enough medical care | |||
I feel safe | |||
PEDQ – exclusion and discrimination subscales (Brondolo et al., 2005) | [Because of your background…] | Never | 1 |
Have you been treated unfairly by principals or other staff at school? | Sometimes | 2 | |
Have others thought you couldn’t do things or handle a task? | Often | 3 | |
Have policeman or security officers been unfair to you? | Always | 4 | |
Have you been treated unfairly by classmates? | |||
Have others hinted that you are dishonest or can’t be trusted? | |||
Has your teacher been unfair to you? | |||
Have others suggested you are dirty? | |||
Have people not trusted you? | |||
Has it been hinted that you must be lazy? |
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Spaas, C., Verelst, A., Devlieger, I. et al. Mental Health of Refugee and Non-refugee Migrant Young People in European Secondary Education: The Role of Family Separation, Daily Material Stress and Perceived Discrimination in Resettlement. J Youth Adolescence 51, 848–870 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-021-01515-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-021-01515-y