The Geopolitics of Trauma: The Role of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Admission and Resettlement of Iraqi Refugees in the U.S.

University Of Kentucky Research Foundation, Lexington KY

Investigators

Abstract

This project examines how refugee resettlement practices and experiences rework the trauma of war and violence to create new geopolitical connections between Iraq and the United States. With over two million Iraqis displaced from their country by the recent war, Iraqis have been one of the top three refugee populations resettled in the U.S. in the past decade. Refugees are increasingly defined and cared for through a medical diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), but the role that the medicalization of trauma through the PTSD paradigm plays in refugee admission, resettlement, and well-being is not well known. Research findings from multi-sited research in the U.S. and in refugee screening/admissions sites in Jordan and Turkey will yield new insights into the uneven geography of mental health screening and treatment that will be useful for shaping admission and resettlement processes. These findings will also be helpful to health practitioners attending to the critical needs of refugees and interested in developing intercultural approaches to PTSD. A better understanding of how both service providers and Iraqi refugees engage with the PTSD framework and its implications will enhance U.S. national security and fulfill a humanitarian responsibility for the well-being of the displaced. This study contributes to knowledge of geopolitics and the public health of immigrant and minority populations, and will enhance the participation of underrepresented minorities in research by including training for a postdoctoral fellow and two graduate research assistants. This project pursues three specific aims: 1) to determine the role that the PTSD paradigm plays in the overseas mental health screening and admission of Iraqi refugees; 2) to assess how the PTSD paradigm influences the administration of resettlement once refugees arrive in the U.S.; and 3) to examine how Iraqi refugees experience and interpret the process of resettlement and especially mental health screening, diagnosis, and treatment, and analyze how these experiences vary geographically and by age, gender, education, and time of resettlement. Using in-depth qualitative methods, the research first establishes insights into the workings of mental health screening in the admission and exclusion of refugees in contemporary refugee resettlement practices overseas. Second, the investigators expect to find that the medicalization of trauma as PTSD inserts refugees into their new, post-resettlement lives in a particular way, calling forth specific understandings of what a refugee, the past, and well-being are. Third, the research will reveal how refugees themselves experience screening processes, service providers, and treatment from the point of application to settlement in different places in the U.S. Examining the role of the PTSD paradigm across multiple sites and spaces along the refugee resettlement trajectory will trace out a geopolitics of trauma that challenges assumptions about the scale and fixity of geopolitical relations.