Psychosocial Care in the Syrian Refugee Crisis

Richmond, Miller (2017) Psychosocial Care in the Syrian Refugee Crisis. Undergraduate thesis, under the direction of Kate Centellas from Sociology and Anthropology, University of Mississippi.

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Abstract

The Syrian civil war created millions of refugees who are internally displaced across Syria and in surrounding host countries. The use of violence and forms of warfare against the Geneva Convention make this crisis particularly traumatic for civilians, leading to high rates of PTSD and depression among the refugee population. Relying on concepts of structural violence and the ecology of health, I justify the use of a psychosocial framework to build refugee crisis response in Jordan. I performed ethnographic fieldwork to collect data in the form of stakeholder and care provider interviews and training manuals, and I analyzed and critiqued issues around implementing the psychosocial care framework. In this study, the results fell into four, broad categories: the stigma associated with mental illness and stress-related conditions, the view of mental health and psychosocial care as non-traditional medicine, the sheer scale of psychosocial care needed, and legal issues of providing these services in Jordan. These results led to conclusions that psychosocial care implementation will likely require cultural perceptions around mental illness to change and a large commitment by host countries and the international community must be made. New innovations in medical technology and better understanding around mental illness will ease and improve the implementation of a psychosocial care infrastructure that reduces suffering from mental illness.

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