As of today, an estimated 25 million refugees and asylum seekers have been forced to flee their homes globally. During the writing of this report, warring parties in the Syrian conflict continue fighting and human rights violations continue. Currently, more than 3.6 million Syrian refugees receive temporary protection in Turkey and approximately 2 million have fled to neighbouring countries Lebanon and Jordan. A substantial number of refugees from Syria were also resettled in Norway during the period 2015-2018.
This report describes the main findings from the first wave of the REFUGE study, a nation-wide survey of mental health and quality of life among refugees from Syria resettled in Norway. It is well documented that exposure to traumatic events prior to or during flight can have detrimental effects on mental health. The main aim of the REFUGE study was to investigate how integration is affected by mental health in the years following resettlement.
The study encompasses a longitudinal, three-wave questionnaire-based survey, a qualitative interview-based survey and data from Norwegian population-based registries. In this first report, we present the main findings from the initial quantitative data collection wave in Norway.