Traumatic Experience and Coping among Adolescent Refugees: A scoping review

Adolescent refugees may be uniquely impacted by potential traumatic experiences due to their incomplete bio-psychosocial and cognitive development, dependence, and underdeveloped coping skills. Despite this vulnerability, there is a lack of clarity in the literature on the coping strategies adolescent refugees employ following trauma exposure and how these strategies are associated with their adjustment. The objective of this scoping review was to systematically identify the types of coping strategies used by adolescent refugees and examine the associations between trauma exposure and coping mechanisms.

A comprehensive search of four electronic databases (Ebsco Host, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science) was conducted to identify relevant peer-reviewed articles. Inclusion criteria for studies were: 1) focused on the relationship between trauma and coping strategies was explicitly examined and discussed; 2) trauma was the primary predictor variable and the main focus of the study; 3) coping strategies were analyzed as outcome variables; 4) focused on adolescent refugees or asylum seekers aged 12-18 years as participants, including all genders; 5) articles were published in peer-reviewed journals between January 1, 2001, and June 20, 2021; 6) articles were written in English.

A total of 389 articles were identified as potentially relevant for the study, 6 articles were included in this scoping review. In total, 1694 participants were included across the included studies. Five included studies utilised a cross-sectional research design, and one study employed a case study. The review found that adolescent refugees mostly employed emotion-focused, avoidant and social support/ support-seeking coping strategies among the participants of the included studies. The majority of the included studies showed that traumatic experiences are more strongly associated with emotion-focused, avoidant and social support coping strategies than active and problem-focused strategies across diverse adolescent refugee populations. Avoidant-coping strategy was associated with maladjustment in young refugees.

This scoping review suggests that future efforts should focus on equipping adolescent refugees with problem-solving and active coping strategies while addressing their psychosocial, cultural, and educational challenges to foster resilience and positive adjustment.