MY WAY

Trauma, refugees, post-traumatic stress disorder, group intervention, youth services

The MY WAY project was applied for, conceived and managed by Prof Dr Lutz Goldbeck. Since his death, Prof Dr Fegert has taken over the provisional management of the project.

Sankt Hildegard Memmingen, Erzbischöfliches Kinderheim Haus Nazareth Sigmaringen, Eva Heidenheim gGmbH, AWO Augsburg, Paulinenpflege Winnenden, Jugendhilfe Aktiv e.V. Esslingen, Diakonische Jugendhilfe Region Heilbronn, Kinder- und Jugendhilfe Neuhausen, Heilpädagogisches Jugendhilfezentrum Sperlingshof, Albert-Schweitzer-Kinderdorf e.V., Zentrum Guter Hirte, Jugendhilfe Creglingen

01.01.2016-31.08.2018

Experiencing traumatic events such as physical violence, war experiences, life-threatening flight circumstances or experiences of abuse can lead to serious negative physical and psychological consequences. Children and adolescents often develop post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) after experiencing such events, which represent a severe psychosocial burden.

In this context, studies have shown that underage refugees in particular are also under great stress due to the experience of sometimes complex trauma and a lack of social support, which can lead to an increased risk of mental illness and a high degree of severity of PTSS. In an international comparison, studies to date show that around 60% of underage refugees suffer from post-traumatic stress symptoms. However, only around 4% of underage refugees, some of whom are severely traumatised, receive psychological help due to various barriers such as the costs involved (including interpreters) or cultural and language problems. The development of further economic treatment methods for young refugees is therefore absolutely essential.

We experience this gap in the mental health care system on a daily basis in our clinic. This led to the development of the MY WAY project in January 2016, which serves to evaluate a pre-clinical trauma education group intervention for (unaccompanied) young refugees in youth welfare centres. The aim of the project is therefore to test the effectiveness of a trauma education group intervention for troubled underage refugees with PTSS in a youth welfare setting. Further objectives are improvements in the areas of depressive symptoms and functional level.

Participation in the intervention is offered to participants in addition to their usual educational support in the youth welfare system. The intervention is to be sustainably integrated into the educational support provided by the co-operating facilities over the entire duration of the project. The content of the group intervention was derived from evidence-based trauma therapies and linguistically adapted to the target group. The main components include psychoeducation, relaxation, trauma counselling and cognitive restructuring.

The MY WAY project was divided into three overlapping project phases: Pilot phase (01.2016-06.2016), Randomised controlled trial (08.2016-08.2017) and Dissemination and implementation phase (09.2017-08.2018). In the pilot phase, the intervention was developed and evaluated in 6 youth welfare centres, providing initial indications of the intervention's effectiveness. The young refugees who took part in the intervention reported fewer post-traumatic stress symptoms afterwards than before the intervention. Subsequently, a total of 7 youth welfare facilities from Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria were invited to participate in the randomised controlled trial. After an initial screening, the young refugees from the centres were assigned either to an intervention or to regular educational support. The results show that the young people who took part in the intervention reported fewer symptoms (post-traumatic stress symptoms and depression) afterwards than young people in regular care without the intervention. Long-term effects of the intervention were also demonstrated. In the final phase of the project, the intervention is to be implemented sustainably in the co-operating facilities and disseminated to other facilities. The manual is expected to be published this year and a follow-up project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research to which further youth welfare facilities will be invited will begin in autumn 2018.

Pfeiffer, E. & Goldbeck, L. (2017). Evaluation of a trauma-focused group intervention of unaccompanied young refugees: A pilot study. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 30(5), 531-536.

Pfeiffer, E., Sachser, C., Rohlmann, F., & Goldbeck, L. (2018). Effectiveness of a Trauma-focused Group-Intervention for Young Refugees: A Randomised Controlled Trial. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (in press)

Hirschmiller, J., Fleischmann, B., Pfeiffer, E., Goldbeck, L. (2017). The project "Mein Weg": Trauma-focused group intervention for young refugees in youth welfare. The Youth Welfare Office, 12, 585-588.

Congress contributions

• Annual conference of the German-speaking Society for Psychotraumatology (DeGPT, 2017)
• 35 Congress of the German-speaking Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy (DGKJP, 2017)
• International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies 33rd Annual Meeting (ISTSS, 2017)
• The 15th European Society for Traumatic Stress Studies Conference (ESTSS, 2017)