A systematic review of psychosocial interventions for adult refugees and asylum seekers

Abstract

Background: Europe is in the midst of the largest refugee migration since the Second World War; there is an urgent need to provide an updated systematic review of the current best evidence for managing mental distress in refugee populations.Aims: The aim of this review is to provide an exhaustive summary of the current literature on psychosocial interventions, both trauma- and non-trauma-focused, for refugee populations experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depressive or anxiety symptoms. To produce recommendations for future research and current clinical practice.Method: Searches were conducted in PubMed, PsychINFO (Hosted by Ovid), PILOTS and Social Services Abstracts; 5305 articles were screened and 40 were included.Results: This review found medium to high quality evidence supporting the use of narrative exposure therapy (NET). A lack of culturally adapted treatments was apparent and there was less evidence to support standard cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) and multidisciplinary treatments.Conclusion: NET produced positive outcomes in refugees from a diverse range of backgrounds and trauma types. There is a general dearth of research in all intervention types: further research should include more “real-world” multidisciplinary interventions that better model clinical practice. Recommendations for evaluating local need, and creating a culturally sensitive workforce are discussed.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 96 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.