Meanings of Resilience and Mental Health in a Refugee Context: Voices of Syrian Refugees

ABSTRACT

Despite the adversity Syrian refugees face, the majority of them present positive functioning and do not show clear signs of psychiatric diagnoses. To understand what constitutes this resilience and the concept of mental health among Syrian refugees, a total of four semi-structured groups interviews (N = 25) was conducted in Istanbul (Turkey) and Buffalo (USA). Findings suggest that resilience was cultivated by living in the present with hope for the future; future for their children; feelings of personal safety; being with similar others; religion, and a positive outlook on life. Syrians’ conceptualization of mental health differs depending on their exposure to new practices, knowledge, and available resource in their new country.

KEYWORDS:

• Syrian refugees
• resilience
• refugee mental health
• focus groups
• culture

Acknowledgments

These authors greatly acknowledge the support of the community members and interpreters Najati Ay Toghlo, Zainab Laith Alabbasi, and Othman AlKarkokli.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. “The habitus, the durably installed generative principle of regulated improvisations, produces practices which tend to reproduce the regularities immanent in the objective conditions of the production of their generative principle, while adjusting to the demands inscribed as objective potentialities in the situation, as defined by the cognitive and motivating structures making up the habitus” (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 78)

2. “Structures, then, are sets of mutually sustaining schemas and resources that empower and constrain social action and that tend to be reproduced by that social action” (Sewell, 1992, p. 19).

3. The interpreters were not native English speakers. To keep the authenticity of the translations, the grammatical errors in quotes were not corrected.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the UB GSA Mark Diamond Research Fund;Susan M. Nochajski Research Grant;Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues;