Compounding inequalities: Adolescent psychosocial wellbeing and resilience among refugee and host communities in Jordan during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated risk-mitigation strategies have altered the social contexts in which adolescents in low- and middle-income countries live. Little is known, however, about the impacts of the pandemic on displaced populations, and how those impacts differ by gender and life stage....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2022-02, Vol.17 (2), p.e0261773
Main Authors: Jones, Nicola, Baird, Sarah, Abu Hamad, Bassam, Bhutta, Zulfiqar A, Oakley, Erin, Shah, Manisha, Sajdi, Jude, Yount, Kathryn M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adolescent Health - trends
Adolescents
Biology and Life Sciences
Child
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
COVID-19 - psychology
Disease transmission
Displaced persons
Female
Gender
Girls
Health aspects
Humans
Jordan - epidemiology
Land settlement
Male
Medicine and Health Sciences
Mental Health
Mitigation
Palestinian people
Pandemics
People and Places
Psychological aspects
Psychology
Public health
Qualitative analysis
Refugee camps
Refugees
Refugees - psychology
Resilience
SARS-CoV-2 - pathogenicity
Social aspects
Social Environment
Social networks
Social organization
Social Sciences
Socioeconomic Factors
Statelessness
Support systems
Sustainable development
Teenage girls
Teenagers
Young Adult
Young adults
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Summary:The COVID-19 pandemic and associated risk-mitigation strategies have altered the social contexts in which adolescents in low- and middle-income countries live. Little is known, however, about the impacts of the pandemic on displaced populations, and how those impacts differ by gender and life stage. We investigate the extent to which the pandemic has compounded pre-existing social inequalities among adolescents in Jordan, and the role support structures play in promoting resilience. Our analysis leverages longitudinal quantitative survey data and in-depth qualitative interviews, collected before and after the onset of COVID-19, with over 3,000 Syrian refugees, stateless Palestinians and vulnerable Jordanians, living in camps, host communities and informal tented settlements. We utilize mixed-methods analysis combining multivariate regression with deductive qualitative tools to evaluate pandemic impacts and associated policy responses on adolescent wellbeing and mental health, at three and nine months after the pandemic onset. We also explore the role of support systems at individual, household, community, and policy levels. We find the pandemic has resulted in severe economic and service disruptions with far-reaching and heterogenous effects on adolescent wellbeing. Nine months into the pandemic, 19.3% of adolescents in the sample presented with symptoms of moderate-to severe depression, with small signs of improvement (3.2 percentage points [pp], p
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0261773