HUMANITARIAN CRISIS and improvement of psychological well-being among the refugee population settled in Andalusia

Coordinator: Virginia Paloma.

Duration: 2016-2017.

Abstract: This intervention project, coordinated by Virginia Paloma, aims to promote psychological well-being from a community approach based on strengths among refugees arrived in the city of Seville. To achieve this goal, five specific objectives are proposed: (1) culturally adjusting evidence-based best practices aimed at improving the psychological well-being of this population; (2) increase the psychological well-being of the refugees already resettled in Seville through a resilience and empowerment process; (3) increase the psychological well-being of the newcomers refugees through a resilience process; (4) know the proposed intervention effectiveness; and (5) disseminate the intervention project experience and results. To achieve these objectives, we propose five main phases: (1) familiarization with the community; (2) training as “well-being agents” to resettled displaced population with Spanish language proficiency through resilient mutual aid sessions and empowerment training in mentoring; (3) boost the “mutual aid cultural groups” by the “well-being agents” who will reproduce the training received to newcomers refugees in their native language through a peer mentoring approach; (4) both intervention formats evaluation to know their effectiveness; and (5) of project dissemination. The expected results are: (1) to improve psychological well-being and other positive indicators in the refugee population settled in Seville; (2) to contribute to scientific development by understanding the psychological well-being of the displaced population from a strengthened community-based approach; (3) guide the creation of effective action lines that respond to the current community challenges in migration and mental health; and (4) to consolidate our collaborative partnership university-social organization by seeking synergies and generating joint contributions in scientific and social debate forums. This project is being implemented during the year 2017 in collaboration with the Comisión Española de Ayuda al Refugiado and it is receiving funding from the Lafourcade-Ponce Foundation.

Funded by:
Lafourcade-Ponce Foundation for Psychological Well-being.