Depression and parasuicide in refugee and Slovenian adolescents

The association between depression and traumatic experiences, stress, loss, and bereavement is well known. It was expected that Bosnian refugee adolescents who had fled from war zones to Slovenia would develop higher levels of depression than their Slovenian peers without war traumatic experiences. Two years after the beginning of the war in Bosnia, 265 8th-grade refugee students aged 14 to 15 years were assessed with the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) and compared with a sample of 195 Slovenian students of the same age. The Bosnian refugees showed significantly lower rates of depressive symptomatology despite very high rates of posttraumatic stress symptoms. Slovenian adolescents showed significantly lower self-esteem and greater feelings of inadequacy in the academic field; they were more likely to have feelings of not being loved and more often expressed the wish to kill themselves. Refugees described more sadness, worried about the future and about physical pains, but they do not show lower school achievement or more behavioral problems. The results indicate that the association between traumatic experiences and depressive symptoms is not inevitable, and that other factors including culture and context influences must be taken into account.