Community Sponsorship Webinars

Building Mental, Social, and Emotional Wellness: Understanding Refugee Resilience in Working with our New Neighbors

As more and more refugee families enter into the US, transferring from safe havens and into our shared communities, it is imperative for us to learn more about the spiritual psycho socioemotional wellness of our new neighbors. Despite experiencing three different stages of trauma in preflight, flight, and postflight migration, many resettling refugee families have been able to tap into reservoirs of resilience to help them through deeply traumatic experiences. Upon resettlement, survival mode often shifts into seeking higher levels of emotional needs being met which can lead to dips in mental and emotional wellness. As the physiological aspects of safety, security, food, and drink stabilize, refugee families often become increasingly aware of unmet needs in the higher echelons of love/belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization and the eventual achievement of self-transcendence. Understanding those needs and how best to help our new neighbors meet them can allow us to provide collective socioemotional care delivered with dignity and a conscientious awareness of faith and culture. In this session, attendees will learn how to enhance their communication approaches across cultures to promote refugee mental, social, and emotional wellness that will result in building greater understanding and connection with a focus on renewing refugee resilience throughout the acculturation process of resettlement.

Hosted on 2/07/22 by Dr. Suzy Ismail .