Refugee Children and Interventions for Depression: A Review of Current Interventions and Implications of the Ecological Context

Promoting positive development among refugee adolescents

Of the estimated 35.3 million refugees around the world (UNHCR, Figures at a Glance, 2022), approximately 50% are children under the age of 18. Refugee adolescents represent a unique group as they navigate developmental tasks in an unstable and often threatening environment or in resettlement contexts in which they often face marginalization. In addition to physiological, social, and psychological changes that mark adolescence, refugee youth often face traumatic experiences, acculturative stress, discrimination, and a lack of basic resources. In this consensus statement, we examine research on refugee adolescents' developmental tasks, acculturative tasks, and psychological adjustment using Suárez-Orozco and colleague's integrative risk and resilience model for immigrant-origin children and youth proposed by Suárez-Orozco et al. Finally, we discuss recommendations-moving from proximal to more distal contexts.

Medical Care for Newly Arrived Displaced Persons

Medical Care for Displaced PersonsThe United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports that more than 100 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes due to persecution, conflict, violence, and human rights violations. Displacement has profound health impacts. Here, Jain and colleagues review medical care for newly displaced persons.

Interventions to improve refugee children's access to education and quality learning: A scoping review of existing impact evaluations

Refugee children face numerous challenges in accessing quality education. In the past years, the number of interventions aiming to address these challenges has grown substantially. What is still scarce, however, is systematic evidence on what works to improve refugee children's enrolment and learning. The authors of this article set out to find what robust quantitative evidence exists regarding interventions that seek to improve access to education and quality learning for refugee children. They conducted a first scoping review of quantitative peer-reviewed articles which evaluate the effect of specific interventions which aimed to improve access to education and/or quality learning for refugee children. While their literature search for the time-period 1990-2021 resulted in 1,873 articles, only eight of these fit the authors' selection criteria. This low number indicates that there is a general lack of robust evidence as to what works to improve quality learning for refugee children. What the authors' mapping of the research evidence does suggest is that cash transfer programmes can increase school attendance and that learning outcomes, such as second-language acquisition, can be improved through physical education, early childhood development programmes, or online game-based solutions. Other interventions, such as drama workshops, appear to have had zero effect on second-language acquisition. The authors conclude their article by addressing the limitations and implications of this body of interventions for future research.

Acculturation and Psychopathology

Acculturation and psychopathology are linked in integrated, interactional, intersectional, and dynamic ways that span different types of intercultural contact, levels of analysis, timescales, and contexts. A developmental psychopathology approach can be useful to explain why, how, and what about psychological acculturation results in later adaptation or maladaptation for acculturating youth and adults. This review applies a conceptual model of acculturation and developmental psychopathology to a widely used framework of acculturation variables producing an Integrated Process Framework of Acculturation Variables (IP-FAV). This new comprehensive framework depicts major predisposing acculturation conditions (why) as well as acculturation orientations and processes (how) that result in adaptation and maladaptation across the life span (what). The IP-FAV is unique in that it integrates both proximal and remote acculturation variables and explicates key acculturation processes to inform research, practice, and policy.