Traumatized refugees: identifying needs and facing challenges for mental health care

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On 6 December 2019 we start the 10th year of the European Journal of Psychotraumatogy (EJPT), a full Open Access journal on psychotrauma. This editorial is part of a special issue/ collection celebrating the 10 years anniversary of the journal where we will acknowledge some of our most impactful articles of the past decade (also discussed below and marked with * in the reference list). In this editorial the editors present a decennial review of the field addressing a range of topics that are core to both the journal and to psychotraumatology as a discipline. These include neurobiological developments (genomics, neuroimaging and neuroendocrine research), forms of trauma exposure and impact across the lifespan, mass trauma and early interventions, work-related trauma, trauma in refugee populations, and the potential consequences of trauma such as PTSD or Complex PTSD, but also resilience. We address innovations in psychological, medication (enhanced) and technologyassisted treatments, mediators and moderators like social support and finally how new research methods help us to gain insights in symptom structures or to better predict symptom development or treatment success. We aimed to answer three questions 1. Where did we stand in 2010? 2. What did we learn in the past 10 years? 3. What are our knowledge gaps? We conclude with a number of recommendations concerning top priorities for the future direction of the field of psychotraumatology and correspondingly the journal.

Section: Refugeesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A decennial review of psychotraumatology: what did we learn and where are we going?

Olff

Amstadter

Armour

et al. 2019

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“…Another population that requires expertise on psychotraumatology in the three countries is that of the refugees (e.g. Knaevelsrud et al, 2017;Spiller et al, 2017).…”

Section: Psychotraumatology In the German-speaking Countriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…in detention facilities of some countries) and also large-scale disasters and terror attacks that struck individual countries. Finally, over the last decades, an increasing number of migrants have reached the European countries, due to war and violence in their homeland (Hall & Olff, 2016;Kartal & Kiropoulos, 2016;Knaevelsrud, Stammel, & Olff, 2017;Munz & Melcop, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trauma and trauma care in Europe

Schäfer

Hopchet²,

Vandamme³

et al. 2018

The European countries have a long history of exposure to large-scale trauma. In the early 1990s the increasing awareness of the consequences of trauma within the mental health community led to the foundation of local societies for psychotraumatology across Europe and the European Society of Traumatic Stress Studies (ESTSS), which celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2018. The focus of this article is to describe the current state of care for survivors of trauma in the 15 European countries where ESTSS member societies have been established. Brief descriptions on the historical burden of trauma in each country are followed by an overview of the care system for trauma survivors in the countries, the state-of-the-art of interventions, current challenges in caring for survivors and the topics that need to be most urgently addressed in the future. The reports from the different countries demonstrate how important steps towards a better provision of care for survivors of trauma have been made in Europe. Given the cultural and economic diversity of the continent, there are also differences between the European countries, for instance with regard to the use of evidence-based treatments. Strategies to overcome these differences, like the new ESTSS training curricula for care-providers across Europe, are briefly discussed.

“…Last year, we focused on traumatized refugees: identifying needs and challenges faced for mental health care, guest-edited by Christine Knaevelsrud and Nadine Stammel (Knaevelsrud, Stammel, & Olff, 2017). These guest editors did a fantastic job in bringing together three review articles and four original articles on the mental health burden, screening instruments and interventions in different groups of refugees.…”

Section: Special Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychotraumatology on the move

Olff

2018

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Psychotraumatology is on the move. Worldwide, there is an increasing awareness of the negative impact of psychotrauma, which is reflected in the number of publications on the topic. These publications become more and more available to the public (Open Access), even more so than in other fields, and thus lead to quicker implementation of research findings. In this editorial, the editor of the European Journal of Psychotraumatology (EJPT) provides a brief review of how the journal has been doing, including recent accomplishments, some metrics and the ESTSS EJPT award for best paper of 2017, and identifies a number of priorities for the next year.