A bright side of adversity? A systematic review on posttraumatic growth among refugees.

Until the third trimester of 2022, 103 million people worldwide had been forced to leave their homes and become refugees. The traumatic experiences of refugees can lead not only to mental disorders but also to Posttraumatic Growth (PTG). (1) To find the variables positively and negatively associated with PTG in refugees. (2) To investigate the relationship between PTG and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among refugees. We systematically searched Medline, Web of Knowledge, PsycInfo, Scopus, and PTSD Pubs for studies about PTG in refugees. Epidemiological studies using the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory. Grey literature, reviews, and meta-analysis. Risk of bias was assessed by the 'The Joanna Briggs Institute Prevalence Critical Appraisal Tool'. We included 24 studies investigating PTG and associated factors. The factors positively associated with PTG were social support, regular migration status, religiosity, satisfaction with life, time, and problem-focussed and emotion-focussed coping. The factors negatively associated with PTG were: irregular migration status, emotional suppression, and avoidance coping. Studies on PTG in refugees are essential to finding new ways to address mental health in this field. Few studies offered risk of bias, particularly regarding the sample selection. We conclude that PTG may be influenced by many factors and it would be of importance that the centres for support, as well as public policies, took that into account to foster the outcome and not only to focus on disease. This study was partially supported by CAPES and registered on PROSPERO (CRD42020215607).

Methodological challenges in the use of focus groups with people with severe mental illness.

This study addresses the practical, methodological and ethical challenges that were found in three studies that used focus groups with people with severe mental illness, in the context of community mental health services in Brazil. Focus groups are a powerful tool in health research that need to be better discussed in research with people with severe mental illness, in the context of community mental health facilities. This study is based on the authors' experience of conducting and analyzing focus groups in three different cities - Campinas, Rio de Janeiro and Salvador - between 2006-2010. The implementation of focus groups with people with severe mental illness is discussed in the following categories; planning, group design, sampling, recruitment, group interview guides, and conduction. The importance of connecting mental healthcare providers as part of the research context is emphasized. Ethical issues and challenges are highlighted, as well as the establishment of a sensitive and empathic group atmosphere, wherein mutual respect can facilitate interpersonal relations and enable people diagnosed with severe mental illness to make sense of the experience. We emphasize the relevance of the interaction between clinical and research teams in order to create collaborative work, achieve inquiry aims, and elicit narratives of mental health users and professionals.

The McGill Illness Narrative Interview - MINI: translation and cross-cultural adaptation into Portuguese. / McGill Entrevista Narrativa de Adoecimento - MINI: tradução e adaptação transcultural para o português.

This paper presents the process of translation and cultural adaptation into Portuguese of the McGill Illness Narrative Interview - MINI, an interview protocol that is used to research meanings and modes of narrating illness experiences, tested, in the Brazilian context, for psychiatric and cancer-related problems. Two translations and their respective back-translations were developed. In addition, semantic equivalence was evaluated, a synthesis version and a final version were prepared, and two pre-tests were administered to the target populations (people with auditory verbal hallucinations or breast cancer). A high degree of semantic equivalence was found between the original instrument and the translation/back-translation pairs, and also in the perspective of referential and general meanings. The semantic and operational equivalence of the proposed modifications was confirmed in the pre-tests. Therefore, the first adaptation of an interview protocol that elicits the production of narratives about illness experiences has been provided for the Brazilian context.

[Narratives in the study of mental health care practices: contributions of the perspectives of Paul Ricoeur, Walter Benjamin and of medical anthropology]. / Narrativas no estudo das práticas em saúde mental: contribuições das perspectivas de Paul Ricoeur, Walter Benjamim e da antropologia médica.

Narratives are ever more frequent in qualitative studies seeking to interpret experiences and the different viewpoints of individuals in a given context. Starting from this concept, the tradition that addresses narrative is reexamined, including the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, the historical perspective of Walter Benjamin and the field of medical anthropology grounded in phenomenology. In Ricoeur, with hermeneutics as a variation derived from phenomenology, narrative is linked to temporality. In Benjamin, narrative comprised of bits and pieces, always inconclusive, emerges in spite of the official stories. If Ricoeur retrieves tradition from Gadamer as a fundamental component for the construction of the world of a text that makes imitation of life possible, Benjamin, faced with the collapse of tradition, suggests the invention of narrative forms outside the traditional canons, making it possible to hark to the past in order to change the present. Assumptions of medical anthropology are also presented, as they consider narrative a dimension of life and not its abstraction, namely an embodied and situated narrative. Lastly, three distinct research projects in mental health that use narrative linked to the theoretical concepts cited with their differences and similarities are presented.

[Access to first-person experience in research into mental health]. / Acesso à experiência em primeira pessoa na pesquisa em Saúde Mental.

This article presents and discusses the epistemological and methodological challenges related to the empirical study of first-person experience in mental health research. Considering the field of qualitative research, the methodological principles of phenomenology and medical anthropology are examined from a historical and conceptual perspective. The main operational concepts of the phenomenological method applied to empirical research, as well as their two main lines of approach, namely descriptive and psychological/transcendental phenomenology and hermeneutical or interpretative phenomenology, are described. The contributions of medical anthropology are studied especially with respect to the experience of illness and its forms of narrative. Lastly, considering the distinction between experience and narrative based on the theoretical benchmarks of phenomenology and medical anthropology, a more in-depth debate on access to first-person experience is conducted.