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The prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder in Syrian refugees increased after long-distance migration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2022

A.H. Eiset ,
M. Aoun ,
M. Stougaard ,
A. Gottlieb ,
R. Haddad ,
M. Frydenberg  and
W. Naja
A.H. Eiset*
Affiliation:
Aarhus University Hospital-Psychiatry, Depatrment Of Affective Disorders, Aarhus N, Denmark
M. Aoun
Affiliation:
Lebanese University, Faculty Of Medical Sciences, Beirut, Lebanon
M. Stougaard
Affiliation:
Aarhus University Hospital-Psychiatry, Depatrment Of Affective Disorders, Aarhus N, Denmark
A. Gottlieb
Affiliation:
Aarhus University Hospital-Psychiatry, Depatrment Of Affective Disorders, Aarhus N, Denmark
R. Haddad
Affiliation:
Lebanese University, Faculty Of Medical Sciences, Beirut, Lebanon
M. Frydenberg
Affiliation:
Consultant, Biostatistician, Trige, Denmark
W. Naja
Affiliation:
Lebanese University, Faculty Of Medical Sciences, Beirut, Lebanon King Hussein Cancer Center, King Hussein Cancer Center, Amman, Jordan
*
*Corresponding author.

Abstract

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Introduction

Refugees are forced migrants but there is a large variation in the distance that refugees cover and there is a knowledge gap on how this may affect refugees’ health and health care needs.

Objectives

Herein, we investigate the association between long-distance migration and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a serious psychiatric disorder associated with deteriorating mental and somatic health and highly prevalent in refugees.

Methods

Included were 712 adult Syrian refugees and asylum seekers in Lebanon and Denmark arriving no more than 12 months prior to inclusion. The Harvard Trauma Questionnaire was used to assess PTSD and the estimate of association was obtained by multiply imputing missing data and adjusting for confounding by propensity score-weighting with covariates age, sex, socioeconomic status, trauma experience, and WHO-5-score, reporting the bootstrap 95-percentile confidence interval (95% CI). Additionally, a number of sensitivity analysis were carried out.

Results

The prevalence of PTSD was high in both Lebanon (55%) and Denmark (60%) and long-distance migration was associated with a 9 percentage point (95% CI [-1; 19]) increase in the prevalence of PTSD among newly arrived Syrian refugees and asylum-seekers.

Conclusions

In the present study the prevalence of PTSD increased after long-distance migration which may support considering “long-distance migration” in refugee health screenings and in particular when assessing the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder. This is a first step in examining the health effects of migration on refugee health.

Disclosure

No significant relationships.

Keywords

Refugeescross-sectionalHuman migrationPost-traumatic stress disorder
Type
Abstract
Information
European Psychiatry , Volume 65 , Special Issue S1: Abstracts of the 30th European Congress of Psychiatry , June 2022 , pp. S216
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Psychiatric Association
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