CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 345Migration, Health and TraumaMental Health Treatment and AccessMigration, Racism, and Human Rights

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 145 of the 149 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Perceptions of mental health and perceived barriers to mental health help-seeking amongst refugees: A systematic review

Byrow, Yulisha, Pajak, Rosanna, Specker, Philippa, Nickerson, Angela·2020·Clinical Psychology Review
DOI 10.1016/j.cpr.2019.101812
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Despite elevated rates of psychological disorders amongst individuals from a refugee background, levels of mental health help-seeking in these populations are low. There is an urgent need to understand the key barriers that prevent refugees and asylum-seekers from accessing help for psychological symptoms. This review synthesises literature examining perceptions of mental health and barriers to mental health help-seeking in individuals from a refugee background. Our analysis, which complies with PRISMA reporting guidelines, identified 62 relevant studies. Data extraction and thematic analytic techniques were used to synthesise findings from quantitative (n = 26) and qualitative (n = 40) studies. We found that the salient barriers to help-seeking were: (a) cultural barriers, including mental health stigma and knowledge of dominant models of mental health; (b) structural barriers, including financial strain, language proficiency, unstable accommodation, and a lack of understanding of how to access services, and (c) barriers specific to the refugee experience, including immigration status, a lack of trust in authority figures and concerns about confidentiality. We discuss and contextualise these key themes and consider how these findings can inform the development of policies and programs to increase treatment uptake and ultimately reduce the mental health burden amongst refugees and asylum-seekers.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.cpr.2019.101812

Cites

145 of 145 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

We couldn’t retrieve this paper’s full text, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Research works printed but not linked: 18

  1. WHO, 2011, World Health Statistics 2011, 1, 170
  2. Jorm, 1997, 166, 182
  3. Momartin, 2006, Temporary versus permanent protection visas, MJA, 185, 357
  4. Ojeda, 2011, Barriers to mental health care : An examination of perceptions and attitudes among adults reporting unmet need*, Health (San Francisco), 49, 317
  5. Palmer, 2006, Imperfect prescription: Mental health perceptions, experiences and challenges faced by the Somali community in the London Borough of Camden and service responses to, Primary Care Mental Health, 4, 45
  6. Blair, 2001, Mental health needs among Cambodian refugees in Utah, International Social Work, 44, 179, 10.1177/002087280104400204 · DOI
  7. Drummond, 2011, Barriers to accessing health care services for West African refugee women living in Western Australia, Health Care for Women International, 32, 206, 10.1080/07399332.2010.529216 · DOI · Paper page
  8. Kira, 2014, The Traumatogenic dynamics of internalized stigma of mental illness among Arab American, Muslim, and refugee clients, Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association, 20, 250, 10.1177/1078390314542873 · DOI
  9. May, 2014, Mental health literacy among refugee communities: Differences between the Australian lay public and the Iraqi and Sudanese refugee communities, Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 49, 757, 10.1007/s00127-013-0793-9 · DOI
  10. Nickerson, 2019, “Tell Your Story”: a randomized controlled trial of an online intervention to reduce mental health stigma and increase help-seeking in refugee men with posttraumatic stress, Psychological Medicine
  11. Palmer, 2006, Imperfect prescription: Mental health perceptions, experiences and challenges faced by the Somali community in the London Borough of Camden and service responses to, Primary Care Mental Health, 4, 45
  12. Palmer, 2007, Caught between inequality and stigma: The impact of psychosocial factors and stigma on the mental health of Somali forced migrants in the London Borough of Camden, Diversity in Health and Social Care, 4, 177
  13. Piwowarczyk, 2014, Congolese and Somali beliefs about mental health services, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 202, 209, 10.1097/NMD.0000000000000087 · DOI
  14. Roberts, 2017, Mental health care utilisation among internally displaced persons in Ukraine: Results from a nation-wide survey, Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, 1
  15. Slewa-Younan, 2017, Causes of and risk factors for posttraumatic stress disorder: The beliefs of Iraqi and afghan refugees resettled in Australia, International Journal of Mental Health Systems, 11, 1, 10.1186/s13033-016-0109-z · DOI
  16. Slewa-Younan, 2014, Mental health literacy of resettled Iraqi refugees in Australia: Knowledge about posttraumatic stress disorder and beliefs about helpfulness of interventions, BMC Psychiatry, 14, 1, 10.1186/s12888-014-0320-x · DOI
  17. Wong, 2006, Barriers to mental health care utilization for U.S. Cambodian refugees, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 74, 1116, 10.1037/0022-006X.74.6.1116 · DOI · Paper page
  18. Yaser, 2016, Beliefs and knowledge about post-traumatic stress disorder amongst resettled afghan refugees in Australia, International Journal of Mental Health Systems, 10, 1, 10.1186/s13033-016-0065-7 · DOI · Paper page

Cited by

Sorted by citations

See all 345

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Byrow, Y., Pajak, R., Specker, P., & Nickerson, A.
Affiliations
UNSW Sydney (AU)
Corresponding author
Byrow, Yulisha
ORCID
Venue
Clinical Psychology Review
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2020-02
Volume
75
Pages
101812
ISSN
0272-7358 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/j.cpr.2019.101812
OpenAlex
W2997387113
Cited by
345
References
149
Citations by year
2026: 34 · 2025: 60 · 2024: 88 · 2023: 56 · 2022: 66 · 2021: 35 · 2020: 6
FWCI
4.24
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
Locations
  • Clinical Psychology Review (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Funders
BeyondBlue research grant (CLT:7237)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Migration, Health and Trauma
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Mental Health Treatment and Access
  • Social Sciences › Law › Migration, Racism, and Human Rights
Keywords
refugees, asylum seekers, mental health help-seeking, help-seeking barriers, mental health stigma, cultural barriers, structural barriers, financial stress, language barriers, immigration status, confidentiality concerns, mental health perceptions, mental illness
MeSH terms
Mental Disorders, Health Services Accessibility, Humans, Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice, Mental Health, Patient Acceptance of Health Care, Refugees, Social Stigma

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review