Contributors to Screening Positive for Mental Illness in Lebanon’s Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp: Seminar

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Room 410, Level 4, 207 Bouverie Street

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Centre for Mental Health

T: +61 3 8344 0710

Professor Steven Segal will present a seminar on the 10th of November regarding his research on contributors to screening positive for mental illness in Lebanon’s Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp.

Objective: To examine the role of contributors to the mental health status of Palestinians, Syrians, and Non-refugee residents of Lebanon’s Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp.

Methods: Primary-healthcare-clinic-patients in Shatila were screened for mental illness between 2012-13 using the K6, the PC-PTSD, and the Modified-MINI screens. Logistic regressions examined contributors to positive mental illness screens.

Results: On average, people lived in the camp 21.1 years (±17), 63% had stable-housing, and 78% war-event exposure. Mental illness prevalence was: 51.6%, total; 34.8%, Serious Mental Illness (SMI)-alone; 5.2%, PTSD alone;10.8%, co-morbid-SMI/PTSD. For Palestinians, stable housing accounted for a 79% reduction in SMI-screen risk.

For non-refugees, each additional year of Shatila-residence was associated with a 17% reduction in SMI-screen risk, stable housing a 98% risk reduction. For Syrians, war-eventexposure accounted for a 27-fold increase, and access to paid employment for a 66% decrease, in SMI-screen risk.

Conclusions: Stable-living-situations and economically productive employment for those trapped in a refugee situation, even in the face of war-trauma, seem most important for ensuring reduced mental disorder risk.

Steven P. Segal, PhD, MSW, ASCW, is Professor and Director of the Mental Health and Social Welfare Research Group, School of Social Welfare, University of California, Berkeley, and currently a Fulbright Alumni Fellow and Honorary Professor at the University of Melbourne.

Professor Segal’s previous positions include: Distinguished Professor and Director of the Mack Center on Mental Health and Social Conflict; Director, Center for Self Help Research; and Senior Fulbright Research/Lectureships in Australia, the United Kingdom and Italy. He has received competitive research funding for over thirty-five years, published four books and over one hundred peer-reviewed publications. 

Professor Segal has worked on mental health services research related to long-term community and residential care, civil commitment, dangerousness and quality of psychiatric emergency care, trauma, and refugees; taught at all levels of post-secondary education; and as Mack Center Director led the development of trauma informed programmatic efforts in Lebanon, Kenya, Jordan and Israel.