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EMPHNET 7th Regional Conference 2021: “Towards Public Health Resilience in the EMR: Breaking Barriers” (62)

Published on in Vol 8, No 1 (2022): Jan-Dec

Preprints (earlier versions) of this paper are available at https://preprints.jmir.org/preprint/36365, first published .
Behavioral and Emotional Problems Among Jordanian and Syrian Refugee Children in Noncamp Settings

Behavioral and Emotional Problems Among Jordanian and Syrian Refugee Children in Noncamp Settings

Behavioral and Emotional Problems Among Jordanian and Syrian Refugee Children in Noncamp Settings

Authors of this article:

Bayan Sarsour1 ;   Ashraf Aqel Sr1 ;   Yousef Khader2
Article Authors Cited by Tweetations Metrics

    Abstract

    1Ministry of Health, Amman, Jordan

    2Jordan University of Science and Technology, Irbid, Jordan

    Corresponding Author:

    Bayan Sarsour, MD

    Ministry of Health

    Ministry of Health building, 6th floor

    Amman

    Jordan

    Phone: 962 65200230 ext 2640

    Fax:962 65688373

    Email: Bayan_sarsour@yahoo.com


    Background: Refugee children have an increased risk of physical and psychological illness. Data on behavioral and emotional problems among Jordanian and Syrian refugee children in noncamp settings are scarce.

    Objective: This study aimed to assess the behavioral and emotional problems among Syrian school children refugees living outside camps in Jordan and their Jordanian counterparts.

    Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among Syrian and Jordanian school children, aged 12-17 years, studying in the same schools in 4 Jordanian cities with the highest density of Syrian refugees. A self-reported questionnaire was used to collect information about the sociodemographic characteristics of the children. The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire was used to measure behavioral and emotional problems among these children.

    Results: This study included a total of 1878 Jordanian adolescents (45.6% male and 54.4% female) and 1773 Syrian refugee adolescents (43.9% male and 56.1% female). The parents of the Syrian adolescents were significantly less educated and had significantly lower total family income than Jordanian parents. More than half of the Jordanian and Syrian adolescents had peer relation problems (53.6% and 55.5%, respectively), 36.9% of Jordanian and 35.5% of Syrian adolescents had hyperactivity or inattention problems, 44.8% of Jordanian and 47.6% of Syrian adolescents had conduct problems, and 30.8% of Jordanian and 32.0% of Syrian adolescents had emotional symptoms. On the other hand, 43.0% of Jordanian and 42.5% of Syrian adolescents had prosocial behaviors. In the multivariate analysis, Jordanian and Syrian children differed significantly in emotional symptoms and peer relationship problems. Compared with Jordanian children, Syrian children were less likely to experience emotional problems (odds ratio 0.81; P=.04) and peer relationship problems (odd ratio 0.80; P=.03).

    Conclusions: Emotional and behavioral problems are common among Syrian refugee schoolchildren as well as Jordanian school children. They are all in need of urgent psychosocial support.

    iproc 2022;8(1):e36365

    doi:10.2196/36365

    Keywords

    emotional problems; behavioral problems; schoolchildren; Syrian refugees; Jordanian 

    Edited by G Eysenbach; This is a non–peer-reviewed article. submitted 12.01.22; accepted 13.01.22; published 04.02.22

    Copyright

    ©Bayan Sarsour, Ashraf Aqel Sr, Yousef Khader. Originally published in Iproceedings (https://www.iproc.org), 04.02.2022.

    This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in Iproceedings, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://www.iproc.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.