Community-based mental health interventions for refugee children and adolescents in high-income countries
Citation: Soltan F, Cristofalo D, Marshall D, et al. Community‐based interventions for improving mental health in refugee children and adolescents in high‐income countries. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2022;(5):CD013657.
Language: Abstract available in EN / ES / FA / FR / ZH. Plain language summary available in EN / ES / FA / FR / JA / PL / ZH. Full text available in EN. Podcast available EN.
Free to view: Yes.
Funding sources: National Institute of Health Research (UK) incentive award.
What is this? A large proportion of refugee children and adolescents suffer mental health problems and community-based interventions might be used to try to help them.
In this Cochrane review, the authors searched for studies of community-based mental health interventions that seek to prevent or treat mental health problems for refugee children and adolescents in high-income countries. They did not restrict their searches by date, language or status of publication and did the search up to February 2021. They extracted data from 3 randomised trials (83 participants), which were from Australia (2 studies) and Germany (1). They also identified an additional 35 non-randomised studies.
What was found: At the time of this review, there was insufficient evidence on the effectiveness or acceptability of community-based mental health interventions for refugee children and adolescents in high-income countries.
Implications: The authors of the review stated that evidence from the broader field of global mental health may offer insights into what works and for whom, but that care needs to be taken when interpreting evidence from other settings or populations. They stated that it would be valuable for policy-makers, those implementing mental health support interventions for refugee children and academics, to evaluate the effects of these interventions.
Other considerations: The authors of the review discussed their findings in the context of place of residence (refugee populations) and age.
Podcast of review available here.
This summary was prepared by Eleonora Uphoff, checked by Sydney Johnson, and finalized by Mike Clarke.