NCT03822598

Promoting Asylum-seeking and Refugee Children's Coping With Trauma

Implementation and Evaluation of Teaching Recovery Techniques (TRT) Among Asylum-seeking and Refugee Children

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 170 (actual)
• Sponsor: Norwegian Institute of Public Health · Other Government
• Sex: All
• Age: 8 Years – 20 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

A short term trauma-focused cognitive- behavioral program to reduce trauma-related mental health problems among asylum-seeking and refugee children. The main hypothesis of the study is that the TRT program significantly improves mental health (i.e. reduces symptoms of post-traumatic symptoms, depression and generalized anxiety and increases perceived quality of life (Qol) in the intervention group compared to the waiting-list control group.

Detailed description

Teaching Recovery Techniques (TRT) was developed by Children and War Foundation (www.childrenandwarfoundation.org ) as a tool to support children in coping with their mental reactions to being exposed to war and catastrophes. TRT has proven to be effective in reducing trauma-related mental health symptoms in such contexts. However, it has never been used with children experiencing all the uncertainties and stress of an asylum-seeking context, or with refugee children in high-income countries. The main aim of the present study is therefore to implement and evaluate the TRT among asylum-seeking and refugee children in the context of four different care conditions: 1)asylum-seeking children who arrived accompanied by a legal care-taker 2) asylum-seeking children less than 15 years in care centers administered by the Child Welfare Services 3) asylum-seeking children 15 years and older living in asylum centers regulated by the Directorate of Immigration 4) Former unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who have been granted residence (refugees) and are resettled in a municipality in Norway. Based on Power analyses, the target group is 40 children in each care condition (total n = 160) \> 9 years speaking Arabic, Tigrinya, Somali, Dari, or Pashto. The study employs a randomized clustered experimental design that includes a waiting list control group, which will receive the TRT when the intervention group has completed the program.

Conditions

• Mental Health Disorder
• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Adolescence
• Depression
• Social Anxiety

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Teaching Recovery Techniques, TRT	TRT is a , low-threshold, group based, manual driven short term intervention to reduce trauma-related mental health problems. The program is based on principles from trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy

Timeline

• Start date: 2017-06-20
• Primary completion: 2018-05-31
• Completion: 2018-06-30
• First posted: 2019-01-30
• Last updated: 2019-01-30

Locations

16 sites across 1 country: Norway