Can lifestyle change play a role in trauma treatment among refugee communities?

Abstract

The global interest in recent years, in refugee mental health, led to an interest in research on good psychological practices with refugees. Despite the many successes of Australia's multiculturism, refugees continue to face ongoing barriers that prevent them from fully integrating with society, in most cases due to their mental health status. Evidence-based treatments have been effective in treating mental health issues including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, not all evidence-based treatments will work for all refugees due to cultural differences. Refugee service providers, for example, social workers may need to explore effective treatment to enhance the treatment responses, and to assist this group during the resettlement process. Purpose: the aim of this research is to identify the most effective trauma treatment for traumatised refugees that assist them to become productive and integrated into society. Methods: a critical review was conducted focusing on the refugee populations in Western Sydney from (the Non-English-Speaking background). A theoretical taxonomy of trauma was built with a view to contrasting the effectiveness of the recommended interventions. This study compares three treatments: two well-known in Australia, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) & one newly developed in Jordan, the ReiK method. The purpose is to collect useful information for the medical, social work and psychological therapeutic service providers to community members. This comparative analysis is valuable as it is based on the protocols developed and available for each method and builds an enhanced access to wellbeing for members of different cultural groups. This research study focussed on eight published studies that encourage additional interventions to the currently available methods. Additions, including; cultural appropriation, lifestyle change, problem-solving, and personal development, to investigate the effectiveness of the methods. Further, this will be more rigorous and useful to the medical and research communities. The researcher extracted published data from included studies independently. Further, the research student considered evidence-based data to guide which method is preferred to be utilised to assist the healing process for members of this diverse population. Results: it is clear from the included published studies that the practitioners used the most common interventions (CBT and NET) with additions in an attempt to treat refugees effectively. However, further studies on additional interventions on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) are required. Regarding the REIK method, formal evidence-based studies are required to examine the effectiveness of this newly developed modality.

Date of Award	2022
Original language	English