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Zusammenfassung Ziel der Studie Der Artikel beschreibt Evaluationsergebnisse eines Modellprojekts zur Unterstützung psychisch belasteter Geflüchteter durch geschulte Laien. Ziel der Evaluation war eine Beurteilung hinsichtlich Notwendigkeit, Nützlichkeit und Effektivität des Projekts. Methodik Es wurden involvierte und außenstehende Akteure mittels validierter sowie selbst entworfener Instrumente befragt und die Ergebnisse durch statistische Datenanalyse ausgewertet. Bei den Stichproben handelte es sich um 197 in Sammelunterkünften lebende Geflüchtete, 18 im Projekt arbeitende Laienhelfer (LH) sowie 16 Sozialarbeiter und Verwalter aus zwölf Flüchtlingsunterkünften. Ergebnisse Mehr als die Hälfte der befragten Geflüchteten gaben eine psychisch auffällige Belastung an. Die Laienhilfe, die primär aus individualisierten Einzelangeboten bestand, wurde von den Geflüchteten positiv bewertet. 58,5 % der Klienten der LH wurden in die Regelversorgung weitervermittelt. Schulung, Koordination und Supervision wurden von den LH als gut bewertet. Im Projektverlauf änderte sich die Belastung der LH nicht. Sozialarbeiter und Verwalter der Flüchtlingsunterkünfte sahen die Arbeit der LH als hilfreich an. Schlussfolgerung Das Konzept des Modellprojekts erweist sich als notwendig und sinnvoll. Psychisch belastete Geflüchtete profitieren von dem niedrigschwelligen Angebot in den Flüchtlingsunterkünften, und die LH leisten eine wertvolle muttersprachliche Hilfestellung. Gute Schulung, Koordination und Supervision als Rahmenbedingungen ermöglichen den erfolgreichen Einsatz von Laien zur effektiven Unterstützung von psychisch belasteten Geflüchteten.

Facial threat is associated with changes in limbic activity as well as modifications in the cortical face-related N170. It remains unclear if task-irrelevant threat modulates the response to a subsequent facial stimulus, and whether the amygdala's role in early threat perception is independent and direct, or modulatory. In 19 participants, crowds of emotional faces were followed by target faces and a rating task while simultaneous EEG-fMRI were recorded. In addition to conventional analyses, fMRI-informed EEG analyses and fMRI dynamic causal modeling (DCM) were performed. Fearful crowds reduced EEG N170 target face amplitudes and increased responses in a fMRI network comprising insula, amygdala and inferior frontal cortex. Multimodal analyses showed that amygdala response was present ∼60 ms before the right fusiform gyrus-derived N170. DCM indicated inhibitory connections from amygdala to fusiform gyrus, strengthened when fearful crowds preceded a target face. Results demonstrated the suppressing influence of task-irrelevant fearful crowds on subsequent face processing. The amygdala may be sensitive to task-irrelevant fearful crowds and subsequently strengthen its inhibitory influence on face-responsive fusiform N170 generators. This provides spatiotemporal evidence for a feedback mechanism of the amygdala by narrowing attention in order to focus on potential threats.

Face recognition usually takes place in a social context, where faces are surrounded by other stimuli. These can act as distracting flankers which impair recognition. Previous work has suggested that flankers expressing negative emotions distract more than positive ones. However, the various negative emotions differ in their relative impact and it is unclear whether all negative emotions are equally distracting. We investigated the impact of three negative (angry, fearful, sad) and one positive (happy) facial flanker conditions on target recognition in an emotion discrimination task. We examined the effect of the receiver’s gender, and the impact of two different temporal delays between flanker and target onset, as stimulus onset asynchrony is assumed to affect distractor strength. Participants identified and rated the emotional intensity of target faces surrounded by either face (emotional and neutral) or non-face flankers. Target faces were presented either simultaneously with the flankers, or delayed by 300 ms. Contrary to our hypothesis, negative flankers did not exert stronger distraction effects than positive or neutral flankers. However, happy flankers reduced recognition performance. Results of a follow-up experiment with a balanced number of emotion categories (one positive, one negative and one neutral flanker condition) suggest that the distraction effect of emotional flankers depends on the composition of the emotion categories. Additionally, congruency effects were found to be valence-specific and overruled by threat stimuli. Females responded more quickly and rated targets in happy flankers as less intense. This indicates a gender difference in emotion processing, with greater sensitivity to facial flankers in women. Targets were rated as more intense when they were presented without a temporal delay, possibly due to a stronger flanker contrast. These three experiments show that an exceptional processing of threat-related flanker stimuli depends on emotion category composition, which should be considered a mediating factor when examining emotional context effects.