Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-76dd75c94c-nbtfq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-30T08:49:53.477Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 3 - Pre- and Post-migration Trauma and Adversity

Sources of Resilience and Family Coping among West African Refugee Families

from Part I - Refugee Family Relationships

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2020

Lucia De Haene
Affiliation:
University of Leuven, Belgium
Cécile Rousseau
Affiliation:
McGill University, Montréal
Get access

Summary

The negative impact of pre- and post-migration adversity on mental health among refugee populations has been well documented, but a growing body of research indicates refugees’ resilience and family coping. Investigating resilience and coping among refugee families entails a close analysis of individual- and family-level protective factors, spousal dynamics, parenting styles, ethnocultural identification, and meaning-makings of pre- and post-migration experiences. The aim of the study reported in this chapter is to examine the migration narratives of eight West African refugee families (n = 16) in order to identify patterns of sociocultural and familial sources of resilience. Twenty-four qualitative interviews were analyzed. Findings indicate the role of cultural continuity, collectivism, religiosity, adaptive flexibility, and downward comparison as sociocultural protective factors and sources of resilience. Clinicians working with non-Western refugee populations should assess for sociocultural modes of coping and incorporate them into clinical and other psychosocial treatments and interventions.

Type
Chapter
Information
Working with Refugee Families
Trauma and Exile in Family Relationships
, pp. 50 - 68
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Fazel, M., Wheeler, J. and Danesh, J., Prevalence of serious mental disorder in 7000 refugees resettled in western countries: A systematic review. The Lancet, 365(9467) (2005), 1309–14.Google Scholar
Heptinstall, E., Sethna, V. and Taylor, E., PTSD and depression in refugee children. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 13(6) (2004) 373–80.Google Scholar
Schweitzer, R., Melville, F., Steel, Z. and Lacherez, P., Trauma, post-migration living difficulties, and social support as predictors of psychological adjustment in resettled Sudanese refugees. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 40(2) (2006), 179–87.Google Scholar
Hampshire, K., Porter, G., Kilpatrick, K., Kyei, P., Adjaloo, M. and Oppong, G., Liminal spaces: Changing inter-generational relations among long-term Liberian refugees in Ghana. Human Organization, 67 (2008), 2536.Google Scholar
Telzer, E. H., Expanding the acculturation gap-distress model: An integrative review of research. Human Development, 53(6) (2010), 313–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rasmussen, A., Chu, T., Akinsulure-Smith, A. M. and Keatley, E., The social ecology of resolving family conflict among West African immigrants in New York: A grounded theory approach. American Journal of Community Psychology, 52(1–2) (2013), 185–96.Google Scholar
Conger, R. D., Ge, X., Elder, G. H. Jr., Lorenz, F. O. and Simons, R. L., Economic stress, coercive family process, and developmental problems of adolescents. Child Development, 65(2) (1994), 541–61.Google Scholar
Morrison Gutman, L., McLoyd, V. C. and Tokoyawa, T., Financial strain, neighborhood stress, parenting behaviors, and adolescent adjustment in urban African American families. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 15(4) (2005), 425–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, B. H., MacDonald, H. Z., Lincoln, A. K. and Cabral, H. J., Mental health of Somali adolescent refugees: The role of trauma, stress, and perceived discrimination. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 76(2) (2008), 184.Google Scholar
Montgomery, E., Trauma and resilience in young refugees: A 9-year follow-up study. Development and Psychopathology, 22(2) (2010) 477–89.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lloyd, D. A. and Turner, R. J., Cumulative adversity and posttraumatic stress disorder: Evidence from a diverse community sample of young adults. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 73(4) (2003), 381–91.Google Scholar
McLaughlin, K. A., Conron, K. J., Koenen, K. C. and Gilman, S. E., Childhood adversity, adult stressful life events, and risk of past-year psychiatric disorder: A test of the stress sensitization hypothesis in a population-based sample of adults. Psychological Medicine, 40(10) (2010), 1647–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNally, R., Posttraumatic stress disorder. In Blaney, P. H. and Millon, T., eds., Oxford Textbook of Psychopathology, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 176–97.Google Scholar
Appleyard, K. and Osofsky, J. D., Parenting after trauma: Supporting parents and caregivers in the treatment of children impacted by violence. Infant Mental Health Journal, 24(2) (2003), 111–25.Google Scholar
Jordan, B. K., Marmar, C. R., Fairbank, J. A., Schlenger, W. E., Kulka, R. A., Hough, R. L. et al., Problems in families of male Vietnam veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 60(6) (1992), 916.Google Scholar
Igreja, V., The effects of traumatic experiences on the infant–mother relationship in the former war zones of central Mozambique: The case of madzawde in Gorongosa. Infant Mental Health Journal, 24(5) (2003), 469–94.Google Scholar
Bonanno, G. A., Loss, trauma, and human resilience: Have we underestimated the human capacity to thrive after extremely aversive events? American Psychologist, 59(1) (2004), 20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Herrman, H., Stewart, D. E., Diaz-Granados, N., Berger, E. L., Jackson, B. and Yuen, T., What is resilience? The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 56(5) (2011), 258–65.Google Scholar
Harvey, M. R., An ecological view of psychological trauma and trauma recovery. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 9(1) (1996), 323.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gewirtz, A., Forgatch, M. and Wieling, E., Parenting practices as potential mechanisms for child adjustment following mass trauma. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 34(2) (2008), 177–92.Google Scholar
Patterson, J. M., Integrating family resilience and family stress theory. Journal of Marriage and Family, 64(2) (2002), 349–60.Google Scholar
Patterson, J. M., Families experiencing stress: I. The family adjustment and adaptation response model. II. Applying the FAAR model to health-related issues for intervention and research. Family Systems Medicine, 6(2) (1988), 202–37.Google Scholar
Walsh, F., The concept of family resilience: Crisis and challenge. Family Process, 35(3) (1996), 261–81.Google Scholar
Walsh, F., Family resilience: A framework for clinical practice. Family Process, 42(1) (2003), 18.Google Scholar
Hinton, D. E. and Lewis-Fernández, R., The cross-cultural validity of posttraumatic stress disorder: Implications for DSM-5. Depression and Anxiety, 28(9) (2011), 783801.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Young, A., The Harmony of Illusions: Inventing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).Google Scholar
Summerfield, D., A critique of seven assumptions behind psychological trauma programmes in war-affected areas. Social Science & Medicine, 48 (1999), 1449–62.Google Scholar
Watters, E., Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the Western Mind (New York: Free Press, 2010).Google Scholar
Abbo, C., Okello, E. S., Ekblad, S., Waako, P. and Musisi, S., Lay concepts of psychosis in Busoga, Eastern Uganda: A pilot study. World Cultural Psychiatry Research Review, 3(3) (2008), 132–45.Google Scholar
Betancourt, T. S., Rubin-Smith, J. E., Beardslee, W. R., Stulac, S. N., Fayida, I. and Safren, S., Understanding locally, culturally, and contextually relevant mental health problems among Rwandan children and adolescents affected by HIV/AIDS. AIDS Care, 23(4) (2011), 401–12.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Keys, H. M., Kaiser, B. N., Kohrt, B. A., Khoury, N. M. and Brewster, A. R., Idioms of distress, ethnopsychology, and the clinical encounter in Haiti’s central plateau. Social Science & Medicine, 75(3) (2012), 555–64.Google Scholar
Josselson, R., Narrative analysis. In Charmaz, K. and McMullen, L. M., eds., Five Ways of Doing Qualitative Analysis: Phenomenological Psychology, Grounded Theory, Discourse Analysis, Narrative Research, and Intuitive Inquiry (New York: Guilford Press, 2011).Google Scholar
Sarbin, T. R., The Narrative as a Root Metaphor for Psychology (New York: Praeger /Greenwood, 1986).Google Scholar
Harkness, K. L., Bruce, A. E. and Lumley, M. N., The role of childhood abuse and neglect in the sensitization to stressful life events in adolescent depression. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 115(4) (2006), 730.Google Scholar
Kleinman, A. M., Depression, somatization and the “new cross-cultural psychiatry”. Social Science & Medicine (1967), 11(1) (1977), 39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wessells, M. G., Do no harm: Toward contextually appropriate psychosocial support in international emergencies. American Psychologist, 64(8) (2009), 842.Google Scholar
Coe, C., Transnational parenting: Child fostering in Ghanaian immigrant families. In Capps, R. and Fix, M., eds., Young Children of Black Immigrants in America: Changing Flows, Changing Faces (Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, 2003) (cited September 13, 2012). www.migrationpolicy.org/research/CBI-book-ChildrenofBlackImmigrantsGoogle Scholar
Berry, J. W., Acculturation as varieties of adaptation. In Padilla, A., ed., Acculturation: Theory, Models, and Some New Findings (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1980), pp. 925.Google Scholar
Bryant-Davis, T., Belcourt-Dittloff, A., Chung, H. and Tillman, S., The cultural context of trauma recovery: The experiences of ethnic minority women. In Chin, J. L., ed., Diversity in Mind and in Action (3 vols.) (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger/ABC- CLIO, 2009), pp. 127–47.Google Scholar
Başoğlu, M., Mineka, S., Paker, M., Aker, T., Livanou, M. and Gök, Ş., Psychological preparedness for trauma as a protective factor in survivors of torture. Psychological Medicine, 27(6) (1997), 1421–33.Google Scholar
Dooley, L. N., Slavich, G. M., Moreno, P. I. and Bower, J. E., Strength through adversity: Moderate lifetime stress exposure is associated with psychological resilience in breast cancer survivors. Stress and Health, 33(5) (2017), 549–57.Google Scholar
Roubeni, S., De Haene, L., Keatley, E., Shah, N. and Rasmussen, A., “If we can’t do it, our children will do it one day”: A qualitative study of West African immigrant parents’ losses and educational aspirations for their children. American Educational Research Journal, 52(2) (2015), 275305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, K. E. and Rasmussen, A., War exposure, daily stressors, and mental health in conflict and post-conflict settings: Bridging the divide between trauma-focused and psychosocial frameworks. Social Science & Medicine, 70(1) (2010), 716.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×