Excerpt: Rohingya refugees residing in Bangladesh have been exposed to profound trauma in addition to ongoing daily stressors of living in the refugee camps. Accurate assessments of mental health burden and their impact among this population require culturally sensitive tools that remain lacking in this context. The purpose of this study was to characterize salient cultural concepts of distress (CCDs), their causes, consequences, and approaches to treatment, among Rohingya refugees living in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, to help inform future measurement and intervention design.

Authors:Kathy Trang, Caroline Hiott, AK Rahim, Shafiqur Rahman, Alice J Wuermli

KEYWORDS: Mental Health, Rohingya

This first brief in the NYU Global TIES for Children (NYU-TIES) series presents preliminary findings collected as part of the pre-pilot and pilot phases of one of their Play to Learn impact evaluations and a longitudinal study. The impact evaluation, led by NYU-TIES, investigates BRAC's flexible, hybrid home-visiting program in Cox’s Bazar which seeks to engage fathers as well as mothers and the longitudinal study features three-cohorts from prenatal and birth which follow young Rohingya children through their first years of life. The data in this brief looks specifically at Rohingya fathers’ perceptions of play.

Global TIES for Children is excited to share some initial results from preliminary research concerning fathers’ involvement in children’s development in Rohingya refugee communities in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. The research was conducted as part of the LEGO foundation-funded Play to Learn project, a partnership between Sesame Workshop, BRAC, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), and TIES to provide and understand a range of early child development services for these communities. NYU’s research unearths.


Image credit: Ante Hamersmit (@ante_kante on Unsplash)