Refugees' Responses to Mental Health Screening

For a variety of reasons related to pre- and post-migration factors, refugees experience a high rate of mental health problems. The early detection of these problems among refugees arriving in the United States benefits those individuals, the agencies that sponsor them and the communities that absorb them. The development of culturally-sensitive mental health screening instruments to identify pathology among refugees has been the focus of some research. This study explores the reactions of eight Bosnian refugees who were administered the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25 as part of a mental health screening during the resettlement process. Through structured interviews with this sample, the authors elicited qualitative data about the mental health screening, from which preliminary conclusions were drawn about including such screening in the resettlement process.