Refugees are at high risk of developing mental disorders. There is no evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that psychological interventions can prevent the onset of mental disorders in this group. We assessed the effectiveness of a self-help psychological intervention developed by the World Health Organization, called Self-Help Plus, in preventing the development of mental disorders among Syrian refugees experiencing psychological distress in Turkey. A two-arm, assessor-masked RCT was conducted in two Turkish areas.

Resilience is a dynamic, multi-level, multi-systemic process of positive adaptation at the individual, family and community levels. Promoting resilience can be a cost-effective form of preventive and early intervention, offering significant health advantages for young people  throughout their lives.

Torture may be associated with long-lasting somatic symptoms, only partly explained by physical injuries. Physical pain as a result of torture may seriously complicate the diagnostics and treatment of posttraumatic pathology in refugees. The question whether a relation exists between the experience of torture and the extent of reported medically unexplained physical symptoms, is therefore highly relevant. We firstly hypothesized that refugees who underwent torture will report more somatic symptoms, as operationalized by experienced pain, than refugees without a history of torture.

Background
An ‘ethnic’ or ‘group’ density effect in psychosis has been observed, whereby the risk of psychosis in minority group individuals is inversely related to neighbourhood-level proportions of others belonging to the same group. However, there is conflicting evidence over whether this effect differs between minority groups and limited investigation into other moderators.

Aims
To conduct a comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis of the group density effect in psychosis and examine moderators.