Refugee Mental Health Local Community

1
Refugee Mental HealthLocal Community

• prepared and presented
• by
• Bindu Narula
• Settlement and Special Project Coordinator
• Calgary Catholic Immigration Society
• National RAP Conference
• Vancouver, BC February 2007

2
Mental Health Cross Culturally

• Cross culturally mental health is viewed
  differently
• Stereotypes about mental health
• Both amongst refugees and about refugees
• What is normal behaviour?
• Need to understand values and behaviour in a
  cultural context

3
Mental Health vs. Mental Well Being

• Degrees of Mental Health
• Not static, can change with circumstances
• GAR clients with severe mental illness are few
• but there are many people living on the fringe,
  they can go either way
• coping resettlement obstacles with alcoholism,
  family violence, withdrawal and social isolation

4
Services Provided to all GARs

• Primary Counselor
• (RAP ISP) up to 3 yrs
• Follow up and monitoring
• HOST program
• Dedicated volunteers from community
• Survivors of Torture Program
• Listening to peoples stories
• Refers clients for appropriate psychological
  counseling
• Calgary Refugee Health Program
• Referrals to mainstream resources
• Psychologists
• Hospitals for more severe cases

5
Mental Health Resources

• On-going joint meetings with Calgary Refugee
  Health Clinic, CCIS and CHRA
• Objective
• meeting was intended to discuss mental health
  issues and identify gaps
• Identify some refugee sensitive resources in the
  community

6
Some Gaps Identified

• staff not trained to recognize symptoms
• lack of sufficient support system-both clinical
  and informal
• fall through the cracks in system
• back home clients with more serious issues would
  most likely be institutionalized and monitored
• here they are left virtually unmonitored
• above cases are few

7
Some resources

• networking with other agencies and community
  members
• Connecting people with ethno-cultural communities
• Cross Cultural Mental Health
• CHRA 1st language resource for mental health
• Peter Lougheed Centre Crisis Team
• Loss Counseling/Grief Counseling thru CRHA
• Mental Health Clinician at Alberta Childrens
  Hospital

8
References

• http//ethnomed.org/ethnomed/clin_topics/mental_he
  alth.htmlmental