Nowadays, the fact that mental illnesses appear during refugees’ process of
resettlement in their host countries such as Sweden is of concern to many researchers.During
the process of escaping from their host countries,refugees experienced separations from
families and friends and stress about their future which will lead to a higher risk of having
mental health problems.In 2015,there are 163000 asylum seekers coming to Sweden
(Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions 2017, ) and most of them are want to
go to certain municipalities that already have many refugees (Myrberg, 2015), which means
this is an urgent issue that requires the government’s action on solving the mental health
problems of refugees and asylum seekers.During the process of escaping from their host
countries,refugees experienced separations from families and friends and stress about their
future which will lead to a higher risk of having mental health problems. Moreover,Swedish
culture is quite different from the culture of these incoming refugees’ host countries and this
makes the process of therapy difficult since the symptoms of mental health problems can be
affected by cultural background.
Literature review
Hollander et al. (2016) did a cohort study of 1.3 million people in Sweden, which
concluded that refugees have a higher risk of developing schizophrenia and other nonaffective psychotic disorders than non-refugee migrants and Swedish-born. Sidorchuk,
Engström, Johnson, Kayser Leeoza, and Möller (2017) investigated the relationship between
refugees’ and Swedish-born people’s employment status and psychological distress. The
results show that the probability of having psychological distress is equal for refugees and
non-refugees when people are unemployed, and temporary employment increases the
probability of distress for both refugees and Swedish-born. In another study, Hollander,
Bruce, Burström, and Ekblad (2011) concluded that female refugees from low-income
countries are more likely to have mental health problems than non-refugees while there is not
much difference between male refugees and male non-refugees. Although these six studies
investigated refugees’ mental health situations in terms of their gender, employment, level of
income, and prevalence of mental health problems, they did not discuss how to solve the
mental health problems of refugees in Sweden in terms of gender-specific assistance,
employment and income level.
Research Question
My research question is: What are solutions for mental health problems of refugees in
Sweden?
Methodology
I will search for three recent peer-reviewed research articles and some blogs which
reflect Sweden’s current methods to help refugees with mental illnesses and the effects of
these methods by searching for the keywords “Sweden”, “Refugees”, “Mental Illnesses”, and
“Treatment” on Google and the UBC library website. I will identify the effects of these
methods and collect refugees’ feedback on them from these research articles and blogs.
By searching for the keywords “mental health care” and “Sweden” on the UBC
library website, I found the article “Cross-cultural training in mental health care – challenges
and experiences from Sweden and Germany”by Bäärnhielm, S., & Mösko, M. (2012).After
reading the introduction, discussion and implication sections of this article, it is clear that this
article can provide me with useful information about solutions for mental health problems of
refugees in Sweden.Although this article was published in 2012 which is 5 years ago,in order
to get enough research, time limitations may be ignored. Internet search engines such as
Google and Google Scholar were used to search more articles and this can also reduce the
possibility of bias caused by only using the UBC library as a resource.By searching for
keywords like “mental health care”, “refugees” and “interventions” on the google website,I
chose the article “Strengthening mental health care systems for syrian refugees in europe and
the middle east: Integrating scalable psychological interventions in eight countries.” by
Sijbrandij, M.(et al 2017) because this article noted specific solutions for mental health
problems of refugees and it was published in 2017 so it means these solutions are the recent
solutions that can improve the mental health problems of refugees effectively.Peer-review
journal articles are often high-quality and reliable because the writers are usually experts in
the field so readers can trust these peer-review articles.In addition,a youtube video is used as
evidence to support the solutions for mental health problems of refugees in Sweden.This
video was published in 2017 and it is from Swedish Association of Local Authorities and
Regions so it is very reliable.Besides,the video provided a lot of information about methods
that can improve mental health of refugees and what have been done so far.In addition,I have
found an MSF article(2018) talking about solutions to mental health problems.The reason I
chose it as my data is it provides the perspective of a non-governmental organization.
(mention MSF report here)
Textual analysis will be used to analyze my date because it can examine the content of texts
and help me find the answers to my research question.I will read through the articles carefully
and find the parts that contain solutions to refugees’ mental health issues. I will compile the
solutions and analyze them category by category.
Analysis/Findings
There are many challenges involved in delivering mental health care to refugees in Sweden.
This section of the paper will describe potential solutions for various challenges.
Coping with the large scale of the mental health crisis
MSF article a lot of refugees
treat them fast which is a problem because the sacle is large
Cultural differences between refugees and health care providers
(create 1 more heading for a solution suggested in the video)
“These studies showed that both symptoms of PTSD and depression significantly reduced in
refugees who received EMDR” (Acarturk et al., as cited in Sijbrandij et al., 2017, p. 4) and
“It was shown that these interventions, mostly NET and CBT, were effective in reducing
symptoms of PTSD and depression, with the strongest evidence base being for NET” (Nose
et al., as cited in Sijbrandij et al., 2017, p. 4). It states that specialized mental health services
including treatments like CBT,NET,EMDR can be solutions for mental health problems of
refugees. Therefore I can see that if we want to help refugees improve their mental health
problems, we need to ask the government to provide more mental health services above
which can treat different kinds of mental health problems effectively. Overall, (Sijbrandij,
M., et al. 2017) investigated that the evidence-based scalable WHO interventions are
effective implementation to reduce mental disorders of refugees. Bäärnhielm and Mösko
(2012) stated that cross-cultural competence training is essential when treating refugees with
a different migration background.If mental health professionals know more about the cultural
aspects of the patients,it will be more effective to reduce the mental health problems of
refugees..
Conclusion
Although there are limited resources that can
- answer the research question ( Overall,the best solutions for mental health problems …)
-make policy recommendations
-state limitations of research
-state ideas for future research studies
Reference
Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Date of publication). Title of document. Retrieved from
http://Web address
Angeli, E., Wagner, J., Lawrick, E., Moore, K., Anderson, M., Soderland, L., & Brizee, A.
(2010, May 5). General format. Retrieved from
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/