Effects of trauma-focused psychotherapy upon war refugees

✍ Scribed by Johannes Kruse; Ljiljana Joksimovic; Majda Cavka; Wolfgang Wöller; Norbert Schmitz

• Book ID: 102442748
• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 107 KB
• Volume: 22
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0894-9867
• DOI: 10.1002/jts.20477

✦ Synopsis

The aim of this study is to evaluate the effects of a trauma-focused psychotherapy upon war refugees from Bosnia. Seventy refugees who met the criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and somatoform disorders were included. The first 35 refugees were offered psychotherapy and the following 35 refugees received usual care. Outcome variables were changes in self-reported PTSD symptoms, psychological symptoms, and health status. At 12-month follow-up, participants in the intervention group reported significantly lower scores on the PTSD scale and the measure of psychological symptoms than the comparison group participants. Our results suggest that psychotherapy reduces symptoms of PTSD and somatoform disorders among war refugees even in the presence of insecure residence status.

Very often, war refugees are repeatedly exposed to violence due to acts of war, experiences during their flight, and their subsequent life in exile (Eisenman, Gelberg, Liu, & Shapiro, 2003). Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is the most common psychiatric disorder that has been studied in relation to war trauma in refugee populations (Johnson & Thompson, 2008). Posttraumatic stress disorder among refugees is often of a persistent and chronic nature. In the study by Marshall, Schell, Elliot, Berthold, and Chun (2005), 62% of Cambodian refugees in the United States still suffer from PTSD 20 years after having fled their country.

Somatoform disorder was found to coexist with PTSD in traumatized people (van der Kolk, McFarlane, & van der Hart, 1996). To our knowledge there are only a few studies focusing on the comorbidity of somatization and PTSD in refugees (Cheung, 1993). Somatic symptoms are a common clinical presentation of distress among ethnic populations, particularly among traumatized refugees (Hinton, Hinton, Loeum, Pich, & Pollack, 2008).