Fulbright Scholar Aims to Improve Mental Health Among Refugee Children in Malaysia

Fulbright Scholar Aims to Improve Mental Health Among Refugee Children in Malaysia

Colleen O’Neal, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor from New York University Medical Center.  She is in Malaysia on a Fulbright Scholar Award from the U.S. State Department.  Dr. O’Neal was recently honored with the Fulbright New Leaders Group Award for developing a research project and program for the improvement of mental health among refugee children.

Urban refugee children in Malaysia are under great stress, which leaves them at risk for mental health problems. These children do not receive adequate schooling and their mental health problems often go untreated. UNHCR Malaysia, a local Malaysian NGO named Harvest Centre, HELP University, and Dr. O’Neal worked together to start “The Child Refugee Mental Health and School Success Program” based upon research which found that refugee children in Malaysia have significant mental health issues (e.g., Depression and Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome), and both refugee teachers and UNHCR are concerned that these issues are interfering with their academic success in informal refugee schools.

Dr. O’Neal with a few of the refugee children her research will benefit.

This program provided mental health screening and therapy for refugee students, and a classroom behavior-management intervention was conducted with refugee teachers, to help them manage the often challenging student behaviors faced in informal classrooms. The refugee teacher intervention showed statistically significant improvements in refugee teachers’ confidence and knowledge of behavior-management strategies.

Dr. O’Neal’s New Leaders Group Award will be used to ensure the sustainability of  these child refugee mental health interventions in Malaysia. The greater hope is that such interventions will help improve mutual understanding between the U.S. and Malaysia, and at the same time help us respond more effectively to the global challenge of the growing population of urban refugee families who have been forced to flee their homelands to Malaysia and many other countries around the world.