TY - JOUR
T1 - Neuropsychological issues in the assessment of refugees and victims of mass violence
AU - Weinstein, Cheryl S.
AU - Fucetola, Robert
AU - Mollica, Richard
N1 - Funding Information:
Screening is useful as a “frontline” measure to begin describing a patient’s behavior. The question answered by screening will seldom be “Does this individual have brain impairment?” but rather “Does the documented (reported) brain impairment in this indivdiual affect his or her thinking and behavior?” (Nell, 2000, p. 109). This is supported by mental health workers in Bosnia and Croatia who completed a survey as part of the Trauma and Human Development Course sponsored by the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma (Croatia, January 1997). Overall, they endorsed the Neuropsychological Symptom Checklist (1996) as the most helpful screening tool because it posed questions that the mental health worker did not think to ask or did not have the time to ask. In addition, screening served as a guide to treators regarding the most appropriate treatment interventions (e.g., appropriate referral sites).
PY - 2001
Y1 - 2001
N2 - Brain injury, stressor severity, depression, premorbid vulnerabilities, and PTSD are frequently intertwined in trauma populations. This interaction is further complicated when the neuropsychologist evaluates refugees from other cultures. In addition, the observed psychiatric symptoms reported in refugees and victims of mass violence may in fact not be the primary features of PTSD and depression but psychiatric symptoms secondary to the effects of traumatic brain injury. This paper reviews the occurrence of starvation, torture, beatings, imprisonment, and other head injury experiences in refugee and POW populations to alert treators to the presence of chronic and persistent neuropsychiatric morbidity, with implications for psychosocial adjustment. The concept of fixed neural loss may also interact with environmental and emotional stresses, and a model of neuropsychological abnormalities triggered by traumatic events and influenced by subsequent stress will also be considered. Neuropsychologists working with refugees play an important role in assessing the possibility of traumatic brain injury with tools that are relatively culture-fair.
AB - Brain injury, stressor severity, depression, premorbid vulnerabilities, and PTSD are frequently intertwined in trauma populations. This interaction is further complicated when the neuropsychologist evaluates refugees from other cultures. In addition, the observed psychiatric symptoms reported in refugees and victims of mass violence may in fact not be the primary features of PTSD and depression but psychiatric symptoms secondary to the effects of traumatic brain injury. This paper reviews the occurrence of starvation, torture, beatings, imprisonment, and other head injury experiences in refugee and POW populations to alert treators to the presence of chronic and persistent neuropsychiatric morbidity, with implications for psychosocial adjustment. The concept of fixed neural loss may also interact with environmental and emotional stresses, and a model of neuropsychological abnormalities triggered by traumatic events and influenced by subsequent stress will also be considered. Neuropsychologists working with refugees play an important role in assessing the possibility of traumatic brain injury with tools that are relatively culture-fair.
KW - Mass violence
KW - Neuropsychology refugees/victims
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0035467728&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1023/A:1016650623996
DO - 10.1023/A:1016650623996
M3 - Article
C2 - 11795840
AN - SCOPUS:0035467728
SN - 1040-7308
VL - 11
SP - 131
EP - 141
JO - Neuropsychology Review
JF - Neuropsychology Review
IS - 3
ER -