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Effects of internal displacement and resettlement on the mental health of Turkish children and adolescents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2020

Neşe Erol ,
Zeynep Şimşek ,
Özgür Öner  and
Kerim Munir
Neşe Erol*
Affiliation:
Child Psychiatry Department Cebeci, School of Medicine, Ankara University, 06100Ankara, Turkey
Zeynep Şimşek
Affiliation:
Department of Public Health, School of Medicine, Harran University, Yenisehir, Sanliurfa, Turkey
Özgür Öner
Affiliation:
Child Psychiatry Department Cebeci, School of Medicine, Ankara University, 06100Ankara, Turkey
Kerim Munir
Affiliation:
Division of General Pediatrics and Department of Psychiatry, Children's Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +90 312 362 0809. E-mail address: erol@dialup.ankara.edu.tr (N. Erol).
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Abstract

Aims

To evaluate the effects of internal displacement and resettlement within Turkey on the emotional and behavioral profile of children, age 5–18 after controlling for possible confounding and demographic variables.

Methods

We conducted a national population survey using a self-weighted, equal probability sample. We compared the CBCL, TRF and YSR responses regarding children with (n = 1644) and without (n = 1855) experience of internal displacement. We examined the effects of gender, age, paternal employment, resettlement, urban residence and physical illness.

Results

The children and adolescents with internal displacement had significantly higher internalizing, externalizing and total problem scores on the CBCL and YSR, and higher internalizing scores on the TRF. The effect of displacement was related to higher internalizing problems when factors like physical illness, child age, child gender and urban residence were accounted. The overall effect was small explaining only 0.1–1.5% of the total variance by parent reports, and not evident by teacher reports.

Discussions

To our knowledge the present study is the first to examine Turkish children and adolescents with and without experience of internal displacement. The results are consistent with previous immigration studies: child age, gender, presence of physical illness and urban residence were more important predictors of internalization and externalization problem scores irrespective of informant source.

Keywords

Internal displacementMental healthChildrenAdolescents
Type
Original article
Information
European Psychiatry , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , March 2005 , pp. 152 - 157
Copyright
Copyright © Elsevier SAS 2005

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