Psychological screening of refugees

Abstract

The presence of refugees in Serbia has increased over the past couple of years. Refugees, by definition, have endured experiences of harm, persecution and loss of security, which present great challenges for mental health and make them highly vulnerable, especially when access to psychological support is limited. In order to provide preliminary data on the mental health of refugees in Serbia, we conducted a mental health screening using cross-culturally and crosslinguistically adapted questionnaire and norms i.e. cut-offs. The screening was conducted with 111 refugees age 12 to 45 (M = 19.4, SD = 6.25), predominantly male (96.4%) from Afghanistan (79.8%) at different locations in Serbia (Belgrade, Sjenica, Tutin, etc.) The Refugee Health Screener (RHS-15), assessing symptoms of depression, anxiety, PTSD, current distress and coping capacities, was used to assess overall mental health. The results have shown that 92.8% of refugees screened positive i.e. achieved a score above the cut off and should be referred to some sort of psychological support or counselling. Additionally, 78.4% of respondents scored above the cut-off in regards to current distress level, thus showing a need for psychological first aid. Regarding symptomatology, signs of depression (31.5%) are the most prominent, followed by of PTSD symptoms (25.2%), and signs of anxiety (13.5%). These results indicate that there is a need for establishing a systematic and continuous assessment of mental health among refugees and development of wider psychosocial support programs referral protocols.