preview

The United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees

Better Essays

Attitudes and barriers to accessing mental health services among refugees in the United States Introduction The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) definition of a refugee is an individual who is unable to go back to his/her country of origin because of fear of being prosecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political views.1 It is estimated by the end of 2013, there were a total of 16.7 million refugees in the world 2. The United States resettles the greatest amount of refugees and has resettled millions of refugees from all over the world. 3 ,4, 5 While many refugees end up going back to their country or getting resettled to a neighboring country, only a few of …show more content…

Although resettled refugees tend to underutilize mental health care services, only a few studies have investigated in detail why they do not seek these services. Johnson et al. (2014), for instance, studied mental health of resettled refugee women by using the Refugee Health Screener-15(RHS-15), which screens for symptoms associated with anxiety, depression and PTSD among refugee population.16 Their study found that although half of the participants screened

Get Access