About this srcd poster session

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Panel information
Panel 6. Developmental Psychopathology

Abstract

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Emergent research has utilized network analysis to understand symptom structure across populations (Duek et al., 2021; Fried et al., 2018). Young adult refugees have often experienced trauma across development, which can relate to later psychological distress symptoms (Opaas & Varvin, 2015). Network studies with refugee populations suggest that symptom structure may generally match DSM-5 criteria, while also deviating from criteria in key ways (Kangaslampi et al., 2021; Yuval et al., 2021). Understanding how symptoms cluster and interact among refugees in ithe North American context is important because the DSM-5 heavily guides diagnosis and intervention in the U.S. Whether patterns among Somali young adults align with or differ from a DSM-based nosology may highlight important considerations in diagnosis and intervention.
Objective. The present study sought to map depressive, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress symptoms among Somali young adults residing in North America.
Methods. The present study utilizes data from the Somali Youth Longitudinal Study, a community-based participatory research study conducted by researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital and Somali community leaders. Participating individuals included 338 Somali young adults (MAge=21.80 years, SD=2.93) living across five cities in the U.S. and Canada, who were born outside of North America. Symptoms of psychological distress (i.e., depressive, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress symptoms) were measured using the depression and anxiety subscales of the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25 (HSCL-25) and the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ), which were administered verbally. We used regularized partial correlation modeling (Epskamp et al., 2018) to derive a network of depressive, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress symptoms.
Results: The most highly endorsed symptoms across the full sample were “feeling everything is an effort” and “worrying,” although “headaches” was most highly endorsed among women. The symptom network is shown in Figure 1. “Feelings of worthlessness” was the most central symptom based on all centrality metrics (Figure 2). We examined “communities” of symptoms, or groups of symptoms that are densely connected and frequently co-occur. Posttraumatic stress symptoms largely clustered among three communities, some of which aligned with DSM-5 criteria and some of which did not. One interesting observation was that feeling detached (from both feelings and people) and generally on-edge (e.g., jumpy, on guard, irritable) formed one community, along with nightmares. “Dizziness” and “headaches” clustered with reports of sadness, crying, and loneliness, consistent with a somatic presentation of depressive symptoms. Anxiety symptoms largely fell within two clusters, one characterized by more physical manifestations of anxiety (e.g., feeling tense, trembling) and one characterized by reports of feeling “fearful” and “scared.”
Conclusion. The present study contributes to existing literature by focusing on Somali young adults in the U.S. and Canada and including depressive and anxiety symptoms in addition to posttraumatic stress symptoms, whereas prior applications of network analysis to refugee populations have focused on posttraumatic stress. The finding that “feelings of worthlessness” was a central symptom suggests it may be a promising target for intervention among treatment-seeking Somali young adults. Further implications for practice will be discussed, as well as gender considerations, given that gender considerations in understanding psychological distress among Somali young adults remain understudied.

Author information

Author	Role
Kellyn Blaisdell, University of Oregon	Presenting author
Saida M. Abdi, Ph.D., University of Minnesota	Non-presenting author
Kathryn Mills, Ph.D., University of Oregon	Non-presenting author
Philip Fisher, Ph.D., Stanford Center on Early Childhood	Non-presenting author
Gaashaan Yusuf, Community Contributor	Non-presenting author
Heidi Ellis, Ph.D., Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School	Non-presenting author

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