Improving Mental Health Care Access for Refugees via an Innovative Provider Network

While forced migrants, such as refugees and asylees, demonstrate considerable resilience, many experience psychological distress and nearly half meet criteria for a mental health diagnosis post-resettlement. These challenges are partially attributable to traumatic events as well as displacement-related and resettlement-related challenges. Many forced migrants would likely benefit from appropriate mental health care; however, the availability of linguistically-appropriate, culturally-congruent, evidence-based psychological services for forced migrants is lacking across the United States. This is particularly true in Alaska. Approximately 575 people from 28 countries who collectively speak 16 languages are served by the state’s refugee resettlement office; however, the office is limited in the providers to whom they can refer clients for psychological services. Providers report that while many are interested in serving forced migrants, they do not believe that they have the knowledge, skills, and support to effectively provide services. Consequently, in 2018 a university-community partnership formed to address this need, which led to the creation of an innovative provider network. Via review of the literature and thematic analysis of interviews with thirteen Alaska mental health providers regarding their experiences serving forced migrants, a series of specialized trainings was developed: foundations of mental health care with forced migrants, working with interpreters, culturally-congruent evidence-based psychotherapies, psychological evaluations for asylum, and provider vicarious traumatization and resilience. Moreover, ‘lunch and learn’ consultation groups were implemented. Mental health care professionals were able to enrol in trainings for free and receive continuing education credits for their participation. Description of the formation of the provider network along with preliminary outcomes of the trainings, including their effect on providers’ knowledge, confidence, and intention, ability, and commitment to serve refugees will be presented. Attendees will be encouraged to consider how they can use lessons learned from this provider network to improve mental health care access in their communities.

Perceptions of health services among refugee mothers in Quebec, Canada

The recent increase of refugees in Canada, and particularly in the province of Quebec, has led to growing concerns among Canadian authorities about taking measures to improve refugee resettlement. Of these newcomers, 40% are children, accompanied by at least one parent. Little is known in the literature about the resettlement process and the well-being of refugee parents, and how it impacts the family unit, especially with young children. Upon arrival, the main contact of refugee parents with the host society is through services and studies suggest that the quality of the services received has a fundamental role to play in their resettlement process. This study aims to understand the resettlement experience of refugee mothers in Quebec and the societal factors that foster this process. More specifically, it aims to 1) describe the daily activities that refugee parents strive to enact; 2) explore the services they use, and the challenges they face and 3) identify psychosocial needs that could be better addressed by Quebec services. This study reports on 15 in-depth interviews with mothers of children aged between 0 and 5 who immigrated to Canada under refugee status from Middle Eastern countries. Their resettlement processes were examined through open-ended interview questions about their activities, parenting values, services they used, the challenges they encountered, life in their neighborhood and general mental well-being. Data were analyzed using Braun and Clark’s (2006) method of thematic analysis. Results suggest that several mothers encountered barriers using the health services, such as discriminatory experiences, the feeling of not being listened to or not being taken into account. They describe how it impacted their well-being and suggest several recommendations to improve the services. Based on the result, the discussion will enable to understand how the services refugee parents receive can influence their resettlement process.

A wellness programme for mothers living in a South African high-risk community: Enacting a community-based participatory action approach

Background and problem statement:
Although the role of mothers within their families is central and families are considered as the essential units of society, mothering in the context of a South African high-risk community has undue complexities. Apart from the compounding risks for families and the reality of many “poverty traps”, when mothers’ personal and parenting competencies within this context are compromised, then the entire family suffers.

Rationale
There is a need for the development and evaluation of a wellness programme for mothers living in high-risk communities in the South African context. Moreover, scholars argue for a contextual understanding of structural conditions and for the need for a participatory and social justice approach to programme development.

Aim of the Wellness Programme for mothers
The aim of the programme is to strengthen the personal and parenting abilities of mothers living in a South African high-risk community.

Method
A participatory action research approach was used to involve participants via interactional processes to engage with the primary researcher to co-construct the wellness programme. Contextual data were collected from two groups of participants, namely mothers and social workers. A photo voice technique was used where mothers obtained information about the assets and the needs of the high-risk community; and a retrospective time-line exercise (data about mothers’ lived experiences of life phases); and, a focus group discussion with local social workers. Thematic analysis of the collected data pointed to certain skills and competencies that should be included in this programme to enhance mothers’ well-being as well as appropriate parenting.

Wellness programme
The content of the wellness programme comprising of research-generated information and contextual information will be presented with the content and concept mapping of four modules called “Mattering’; “Mothering” “Managing”; and, “Mentoring” located within the theoretical framework of Community Psychology. Guidelines from various parenting programmes are incorporated as best practices toward effective implementation.

African Psychology and Capoeira Angola: liberation, decolonization and indigenization

The paper presents a dialogue between theoretical references of African Psychology produced in the USA and theoretical-practical references of Capoeira Angola in Brazil. The proposal is to look at these two references from an indigenizing perspective of the psychological sciences. Capoeira Angola is a traditional Afro-Brazilian practice, best described as a war dance. Enslaved Africans in Brazil preserved native / indigenous cultural elements and founded hundreds of Afro-Brazilian cultures, such as Capoeira Angola. This social practice is more than four centuries old in Brazil. In the 1960s, it first went out into the world. Today it is practiced in over 160 countries, with about 150 million practitioners on five continents. In 2008, it was recognized by the Brazilian government as Brazilian Intangible Patrimony. In 2012, UNESCO recognized capoeira as a Cultural Patrimony of Humanity. This social practice is maintained and transmitted by traditional educative processes of African origin, orality. Its essential elements are 1) the ritual of the roda, 2) the ginga and game and 3) the musicality. In addition to the traditional transmission of this African root practice, capoeira has been studied since the early twentieth century by numerous researchers from various fields of knowledge in Brazil and around the world. In the Brazilian context, psychology was one of the areas that least produced knowledge about capoeira, Afro-Brazilian population and African studies. This silence has been denounced as an expression of racism. In this sense, establishing a dialogue between references of capoeira and African Psychology is quite innovative. We consider African Psychology as an Indigenous psychology, with over five decades of scientific development in the US and the Caribe. It aims to produce critical psychological sciences from the African worldview. It seeks to use concepts and processes of the peoples of the continent and the diaspora to overcome structural inequalities in westernized societies. This research aimed to show the consistency, coherence and relevance of using concepts and processes of African Psychology to analyze the practice of capoeira angola and how it impacts the life of its practitioners. The philosophical principles of 1) unity with nature and 2) collective survival are observed in the capoeira ritual. As the propositions about orientation, axiology, notion of person, notion of time and epistemology are very close to the organizing principles of capoeira. The study showed that the educational processes experienced within the practice of capoeira have a potential for liberation. Understanding that liberation involves complementary processes of decolonization and indigenization of lived and reflected experience. We want to share this potencial with other Indigenous Psychologies.