Somali immigrants and refugees have a high rate of trauma, mainly because of their traumatic experiences during the Somali civil war and subsequent migration. Nevertheless, they do not readily access available psychological services in the countries to which they migrate. Research of the past two decades has revealed that different cultures conceptualize and communicate mental distress differently from one another. Those differences affect how Western mental health providers approach the treatment of clients who immigrate from an unfamiliar culture to Western countries, where the biomedical model of mental health dominates the health care system. Improved cultural awareness and communication between providers and non-Western clients like Somalis could yield better mental health outcomes. My research aimed to address a gap in the literature about how Somalis conceptualize, understand, and communicate trauma. I used grounded theory to arrive at an explanation of how Somali refugees understand and express traumatic experiences.
Ahmed M. Hassan (Wed,) studied this question.