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Mental Wellbeing of Students from Refugee and Migrant Backgrounds: The Mediating Role of Resilience

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Abstract

An increasing number of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) students from migrant and refugee backgrounds are enroling in schools in the West. These students are exposed to challenges that may influence their mental health and wellbeing. At the same time, schools tend to play a critical role in promoting these students’ social relatedness through a sense of support, connectedness, and an adaptation to the new setting. The aim of the study was to assess the role of social relatedness in promoting mental wellbeing. Resilience was hypothesised as a facilitator process enhancing the relationship between social relatedness and the mental wellbeing of CALD students. Recently arrived CALD students (N = 221) enroled at a specialised high school in Australia completed a battery of measures assessing: social support, school connectedness, acculturation, resilience, and mental wellbeing. A series of hierarchical regression analyses indicated that the three social relatedness factors (social support, school connectedness, and acculturation) were related to mental wellbeing. However, their variance decreased when resilience was added. Mediation analyses indicated that resilience was a partial mediator for the relationship between each of the social relatedness elements and mental wellbeing. Resilience was also shown to play a significant role in the relationship between social relatedness and mental wellbeing. School-based mental health services for CALD students from migrant and refugee backgrounds may benefit by further understanding the unique factors that influence the mental wellbeing of children.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the participants and academic and administrative staff of Milpera State High School, Brisbane, Australia. We are especially very grateful to Mr. Tom Beck, the Principal, and Ms. Ingrid Wood, the Guidance Officer at this school, for their ongoing support with the data collection.

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Correspondence to Nigar G. Khawaja.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Australia. QUT and NHMRC incorporate the ethical principles of 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Khawaja, N.G., Ibrahim, O. & Schweitzer, R.D. Mental Wellbeing of Students from Refugee and Migrant Backgrounds: The Mediating Role of Resilience. School Mental Health 9, 284–293 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12310-017-9215-6

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