Promoting Asylum-seeking and Refugee Children's Coping With Trauma

Overview

A short term trauma-focused cognitive- behavioral program to reduce trauma-related mental health problems among asylum-seeking and refugee children. The main hypothesis of the study is that the TRT program significantly improves mental health (i.e. reduces symptoms of post-traumatic symptoms, depression and generalized anxiety and increases perceived quality of life (Qol) in the intervention group compared to the waiting-list control group.

Teaching Recovery Techniques (TRT) was developed by Children and War Foundation (www.childrenandwarfoundation.org ) as a tool to support children in coping with their mental reactions to being exposed to war and catastrophes. TRT has proven to be effective in reducing trauma-related mental health symptoms in such contexts. However, it has never been used with children experiencing all the uncertainties and stress of an asylum-seeking context, or with refugee children in high-income countries. The main aim of the present study is therefore to implement and evaluate the TRT among asylum-seeking and refugee children in the context of four different care conditions: 1)asylum-seeking children who arrived accompanied by a legal care-taker 2) asylum-seeking children less than 15 years in care centers administered by the Child Welfare Services 3) asylum-seeking children 15 years and older living in asylum centers regulated by the Directorate of Immigration 4) Former unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who have been granted residence (refugees) and are resettled in a municipality in Norway. Based on Power analyses, the target group is 40 children in each care condition (total n = 160) \> 9 years speaking Arabic, Tigrinya, Somali, Dari, or Pashto. The study employs a randomized clustered experimental design that includes a waiting list control group, which will receive the TRT when the intervention group has completed the program.