Original articleCaregiver and Adolescent Mental Health in Ethiopian Kunama Refugees Participating in an Emergency Education Program
Section snippets
Background
The Kunama ethnic group comprises agro-pastoralists traditionally residing in the Eritrean–Ethiopian border region. When war between Eritrea and Ethiopia broke out in 1998, the Kunama people were caught between both sides. In the early stages of the conflict, small numbers of Eritrean Kunama refugees crossed the Gash River border into Ethiopia to avoid conscription, prompting suspicions within the Eritrean government of the group's disloyalty. During the ensuing years of conflict, fears of
Sample
Baseline assessments were conducted in July and August 2001 (T1). Inclusion criteria for adolescents comprised the following: (1) enrolled in the IRC education program; (2) a Kunama refugee aged <18 years; (3) living in the Walanhiby refugee camp for at least 1 month; and (4) without a severe cognitive disability that limited comprehension of the questionnaire as determined by study social workers (no such cases were identified). Adolescents fulfilling inclusion criteria were screened using a
Results
Table 1 contains descriptive statistics on key sociodemographic adolescent and family characteristics. Most adolescents in the sample (average age 14 years at T1) lived with at least one biological parent. Variables examined did not differ by gender of adolescents, with the exception of family socioeconomic status (SES): female adolescents were significantly more likely to live in a family who owned cattle, a radio, and so forth, when compared with males; females were also less likely to live
Discussion
Evidence from this study suggests that caregiver distress plays an important role in the emotional and behavioral adjustment of Kunama refugee adolescents over time. In our study, caregiver distress was a robust predictor of externalizing and internalizing emotional and behavior problems in adolescents at follow-up, adjusting for all other factors, including baseline adolescent distress. This finding is consistent with a number of other studies that have examined the association between
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Asfaw Yitna (United Nations Economic Commission for Africa) for his assistance in data management and analysis and Marie de la Soudiere (UNICEF) for her unswerving dedication to applied research in war-affected settings. This study was funded by the International Rescue Committee. This work was also supported by the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, Boston, MA.
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