Refugees Face Often Neglected Mental Health Challenges – Report

Refugee tents in a camp in Greece. UN report shows refugees may be affected by poor health outcomes. CREDIT: Julie Ricard/Unsplash) By Juliet MorrisonUnited Nations, Aug 16 2022 (IPS) While refugees globally face insecurity and uncertainty, a new World Health Organization (WHO) report highlights that they also face poorer health outcomes. The World report on the health of refugees and migrants, published on July 20, 2022, was the first to survey studies of various refugee health outcomes, including mental health. The report highlighted that refugees are not inherently less healthy than host populations but that various social factors, including changes in income, substandard living conditions, and barriers to other services, can result in poorer health and well-being. Refugees from conflict-affect areas are also at a higher risk of developing mental disorders like PTSD, anxiety, and depression. While rates vary by population and region, one study cited by the WHO estimated the burden of conditions to be 22.1 percent. But experts caution that estimates of PTSD in the field may be overstated because of the difficulty of discerning a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) response from a normal behavioral response to trauma. The WHO report also dove into the importance of mental health, which Dr Timothy Mackey, a global health professor at the University of California San Diego, told IPS is often neglected. According to one report, only 0.3% of international assistance for healt...
Source: IPS Inter Press Service - Health - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Tags: Editors' Choice Featured Global Headlines Health Human Rights Humanitarian Emergencies Migration & Refugees TerraViva United Nations IPS UN Bureau IPS UN Bureau Report mental health Source Type: news