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. 2020 Oct;22(5):923-934.
doi: 10.1007/s10903-020-00992-w.

Capacity Building for Refugee Mental Health in Resettlement: Implementation and Evaluation of Cross-Cultural Trauma-Informed Care Training

Hyojin Im  1 , Laura E T Swan  2
Affiliations

Capacity Building for Refugee Mental Health in Resettlement: Implementation and Evaluation of Cross-Cultural Trauma-Informed Care Training

Hyojin Im et al. J Immigr Minor Health. 2020 Oct.

Abstract

Refugee mental health needs are heightened during resettlement but are often neglected due to challenges in service provision, including lack of opportunities for building capacity and partnership among providers. We developed and implemented culturally-responsive refugee mental health training, called Cross-Cultural Trauma-Informed Care (CC-TIC) training. We evaluated CC-TIC, using a free listing and semi-structured retrospective pre- and post-training evaluation with five localities in two states in the U.S. The results showed significant improvement in providers' knowledge of trauma impacts, cultural expressions of trauma/stress-related symptoms, and culturally-responsive trauma-informed care. Trauma-informed care specific to refugee resettlement was regarded as the most helpful topic and community partnership building as the most requested area for future training. This study emphasizes that culturally-responsive trauma-informed approaches can help bridge gaps between mental health care and resettlement services and promote exchanges of knowledge and expertise to build collaborative care and community partnership.

Keywords: Cultural competence; Mental health training; Refugee resettlement; Retrospective evaluation; Trauma-informed care.

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