Psychological disorders in women in long-term forced displacement in the Sahrawi refugee camps

Resumo

The present study is an initial exploration of psychological disorders in long-term refugee women living at the Sahrawi camps in Tindouf (Algeria). Thirty-one women with an average age of 43.32 years (SD=12.34) were evaluated through personal interviews, applying Symptom Checklist-90-R (SCL-90-R) and one personal clinical interview created for this purpose. In this manner, health professionals were interviewed on the situation of the refugee women in Tindouf. The results show that 80.64% of the interviewed women had received psychological assistance, 100% rated positively on somatization, 90.3% on obsessive-compulsive, 93.5% on interpersonal sensitivity, 96.8% on depression, 93.5% on anxiety, 77.4% on hostility, 87.1% on phobic anxiety, 90.3% on paranoid ideation and 90.3% on psychoticism. The results from the interviews show 32% of the interviewees do not know the meaning of mental health, and 35.48% of them have used traditional medicine even when they admit that they have access to the psychological services at the refugee’s camp (61.29%). The loss of hope for the future represented 41.93% of the opinions of the survey and 64.52% expressed feeling scared for the situation of their families living in the Western Sahara, among other results. Interviews with the health professionals reveal there is a growing demand for psychological treatment due to the recent introduction of psychological services in the wilayas (provinces). In spite of this, the rejection and social stigma around mental health disorders in Tindouf contribute to concealing pathologies or using the traditional medicine as a first option.