Psychological challenges faced by refugee minors in Serbia

Abstract

The presence of refugees from the middle-east in Serbia has significantly increased over the past 3 years. From the international protection perspective, minors traveling alone present one of the most vulnerable groups that need special attention and psychological support. In order to provide guidelines for evidence-based practice in psychological first aid and long-term support of 87 minors, we conducted a research aiming to assess most common psychological challenges in this group of refugees. The psychological assessment was conducted with 108 refugees age 11-17 (M= 15.4, SD=2.6), predominantly male (96.2%) from Afghanistan (87%) using Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) self-report form (Goodman, et al. 2000). The results have shown that 52.8% of minors experience some form of emotional hardships, 10.4% have conduct-related problems, while 40.6% experienced problems related to establishing and maintaining relationships with their peers. The results also indicate that a small number of minors show signs of hyperactivity/attention deficits (2.8%) and rarely exhibit a lack of prosocial behavior (2.8%). These results show that a significant number of minors in refugee population need additional psychological support which would serve to functionally overcome emotional issues and help them establish and maintain quality relationships with their peers thus creating a wider social support network.