We are working to advance understanding and to develop innovative means to improve the mental health of diverse forcibly displaced populations.

Although much of our lab’s work has broad translational or clinical implications for various at-risk or clinical populations, we have chosen to focus on socio-culturally diverse, under-studied, and under-served forcibly displaced survivors of extreme trauma and stress. Today, nearly 70 million people are forcibly displaced due to civil war, violent conflict, ethnic cleansing, and hunger. Many refugees experience violence, torture and sexual assault before and during displacement. Post-displacement experiences are often characterized by life-threatening migration and stressors related to resettlement, residential status and discrimination. The consequences of forced displacement entail severe and chronic psychiatric disorders such as posttraumatic stress, depression, anxiety, suicidality, and substance abuse. Accordingly, our team established the University of Haifa Refugee Mental Health Initiative and founded a satellite laboratory embedded in the heart of the East African refugee community in Israel. In close partnership with members of the refugee community in Israel and NGOs dedicated to the human rights and health of these populations, we are working to advance this emerging area of research and practice. (i) We have begun to identify promising intervention targets by isolating malleable psycho-bio-behavioral processes that contribute to the development and persistence of mental illness, trauma recovery and resilience. (ii) We have begun to develop and test targeted, innovative, low-cost, and disseminable interventions to facilitate trauma recovery and the promotion of mental health (e.g., socio-culturally adapted mindfulness-based intervention for mental health promotion and recovery among refugees), with an initial focus on mindfulness-based training. (iii) We have begun to explore ways to to implement and evaluate the effects of these novel interventions within challenging real-world settings (e.g., free clinics, refugee camps, re-settlement communities). (iv) We have actively worked to increase awareness of this issue among the clinical psychological science community, the general public, and among (inter)national policy makers; and to help advance recognition of refugees’ human right to mental health via collaborative science-based advocacy work with NGOs.

We are currently focused on a large randomized control intervention study examining the outcomes and mechanisms of action of a socio-culturally and clinically adapted mindfulness-based intervention – the Mindfulness-Based Trauma Recovery for Refugees. Preliminary findings from the first intervention cohort are very encouraging and data collection is ongoing. We hope that our lab’s work with these populations will meaningfully contribute to an emerging clinical psychological science of refugee global mental health; and, in turn, support the emerging global effort to address this public mental health crisis.