Practical challenges for mental health services among Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh

Rohingya Muslims have been forcefully displaced from their mother land, Rakhaine State, Myanmar to Bangladesh, a country with about 170 million population with a treatment gap of more than 90% for standard mental health care. Due to the experienced trauma and displacement, high prevalence of depress...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Asian journal of psychiatry 2024-07, Vol.97, p.104069, Article 104069
Main Authors: Jahan, Rubina, Amin, Rizwana, Arafat, S. M. Yasir
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bangladesh
Bangladesh - ethnology
Challenges
Forcefully displaced
Health Services Accessibility
Humans
Mental Disorders - therapy
Mental Health Services - organization & administration
MHPSS
Myanmar - ethnology
Refugee
Refugees - psychology
Rohingya
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Rohingya Muslims have been forcefully displaced from their mother land, Rakhaine State, Myanmar to Bangladesh, a country with about 170 million population with a treatment gap of more than 90% for standard mental health care. Due to the experienced trauma and displacement, high prevalence of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic tress disorders has been identified among Rohingya refugees in addition to the enduring mental health burden of Bangladesh. Very little has been known regarding the practical challenges of mental health services among Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. In this commentary, we aimed to highlight the practical challenges for mental health services in Rohingya camps in Bangladesh along with our speculative ways forward based on available evidence, work experience, and informal communications. We highlighted the available mental health services, several major challenges including awareness, perception and belief towards mental health, language and cultural barriers, dearth of skilled service providers, inadequate services for severe mental illness, dearth of mental health services for children, inadequate provision of supervision and ‘Care for Caregivers’ program, and privacy and confidentiality of the clients. Although significant improvements have been made in the mental health field in the emergency crisis sector in Cox's Bazar over the past years, concentrated efforts are urgently required to actualize proposed solutions in this paper.
ISSN:1876-2018
1876-2026
1876-2026
DOI:10.1016/j.ajp.2024.104069