During the last decades my research has mainly centered
on the mental health and functioning of asylum-seeking and refugee
families with a specific focus on children and youth. The studies
have, among other things, pointed towards the significance of
including and focusing on social life contexts when striving to
understand the children's long-term mental health situation. Social
networks and family resources promote resilience, while continuing
stress and discrimination counteract this. This has implications
for refugee policy, intervention and research.
While several studies have documented a high prevalence
of mental health problems among particularly asylum-seeking
children, my follow-up study showed that traumatic experiences
related to war and other organized violence need not necessarily
determine the long-term mental health situation of the children. A
narrow focus on PTSD thus seems insufficient when trying to
understand the effects of traumatizing experiences in childhood.
Aspects of life in exile seem to be of utmost importance for the
children's ability to recover from early traumatization and
research needs to focus not only on psychopathology, but also on
identifying resilience and adaptation processes in order to be able
to develop interventions which are not only aimed at reducing
pathology, but also at the strengthening of healthy
processes.
The studies also showed the importance of the quality
of family life for both short- and long-term mental health in the
children and to a certain extent the reaction of the children
seemed to be mediated through the trauma reaction of the parents.
My qualitative studies further suggested the importance of family
communication for the children's ability to make sense in the
family story. The 'Intergenerational transmission of trauma'
-concept describes the phenomenon of children reacting to their
parents' traumatization with trauma-related symptoms. The children
do not necessarily have traumatic experience themselves, but the
trauma is passed on and communicated to them through the dyadic
responses.
Based on these results the research centers on four
interlinked themes:
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Developing and testing psycho-social interventions
aimed at preventing mental and behavioral problems in traumatized
refugee families.
-
Identifying and understanding how healthy or
pathological family processes in traumatized refugee families
influence child development.
-
Identifying resilient and adaptation processes in
children and youth exposed to severe adversities related to
organized violence.
-
Investigating how asylum-policies affect the health of
asylum-seeking children.
Within each of these areas several projects are
being carried out or planned
Publications
Montgomery E. Trauma and Resilience in Young
Refugees: A 9 Year Follow-up Study. Development and
Psychopathology, 2010; 22:477-489.
Montgomery E. Long-term effects of organized violence on
young Middle Eastern refugees' mental health. Social Science &
Medicine, 2008; 67:1596-1603.
Montgomery E. Self and parent assessment of mental health:
Disagreement on externalising and internalising behaviour in young
refugees from the Middle East. Clinical Child Psychology and
Psychiatry, 2008; 13: 49-63.
Montgomery E & Foldspang A. Discrimination, mental
problems and social adaptation in young refugees. European Journal
of Public Health, 2008; 18 (2): 156-61. (electronic prepublication
2007)
An overview of my research within this area can be
read in the following publication (disputants):