As the war in Syria has uprooted lives by the millions, humanitarian organizations have worked to supply food, shelter, and medical relief. These services are a lifeline for millions, and it’s a herculean task to fulfill them on the scale that refugee crises demand. But humanitarian workers are also now doing more to address the mental and emotional health of refugees, particularly children.
It’s a need that until recently has been largely overlooked. Research reveals that the traumatic experiences of many refugees can affect their health in wide-ranging ways that can last a lifetime — social anxiety, depression, addiction, cardiovascular disease, and more. Children and youth are most vulnerable. A mounting body of evidence demonstrates that repeated traumatic events early in life, if unbuffered by adults who can restore a child’s sense of calm, interfere with healthy brain development. This physiological response is known as “toxic stress.”
But the damage is not irreparable if treated in time.
Alexandra Chen, a child trauma specialist affiliated with Harvard who works with refugee families around the world, said humanitarian intervention has not done nearly enough to build resilience in children who face circumstances unimaginable to those who have never been forced to leave their homes for safety; and programs that have been designed to provide psychosocial support have been insufficient in their reach and inadequate in their quality.
“We need to act in a strategically different way,” she said. That includes exploring the potential for intervention procedures that haven’t previously fallen into the psychosocial services category “but that may in fact be more effective” in providing psychosocial support.
Rasha Al-Masry, who fled Syria in 2014, may be part of this shift in the community in Jordan where she now lives. Ms. Al-Masry, 30, is an “ambassador” for We Love Reading, a local organization that trains adults to read aloud to children in dedicated public spaces and provides books written specifically for the context they’re going to be read in, with messages and images that the children can relate to. “It’s through these stories that kids learn to deal with their challenges,” from gender inequality to migration, said Rana Dajani, the founder of We Love Reading.
Read more at NYTimes.com.
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