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The Harvard Trauma Questionnaire: Adapting a Cross-Cultural Instrument for Measuring Torture, Trauma and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Iraqi RefugeesUniversity of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA, marwa.shoeb{at}ucsf.edu
Human Rights Center and Clinical Professor, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
Department of Psychiatry Massachusetts General Hospital, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA Background: Mental health assessments in post-conflict zones have relied heavily on Western psychiatric scales. Yet, a strict dependence on the paradigms of Western psychiatry risks inappropriately prioritizing syndromes, such as PTSD, which, however important, are eclipsed by local concerns. Material and discussion: In Dearborn, Michigan, home to the largest population of Iraqi refugees in the United States, 60 Iraqi refugee life stories were collected in order to adapt the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ) to the Iraqi context. Conclusion: The methodology described proved to be a useful approach to developing a trauma measure that is culturally grounded in a multi-dimensional model of mental health.
Key Words: posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ) Mental Helath Assessment Iraq refugees
International Journal of Social Psychiatry, Vol. 53, No. 5,
447-463 (2007) |
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