Community Engagement in Psychosocial Interventions With Refugees From Asia: A Systematic Review

Refugees and forcibly displaced persons originally from Asia are a growing population facing distinctive stressors that impact individual mental health. Psychosocial interventions that are culturally appropriate for specific refugee communities are needed. Community-engaged interventions and research are an effective approach to designing and delivering culturally meaningful interventions to enhance refugee mental health. We conducted a systematic review of the available literature to assess: (a) how frequently Asian refugee communities participate and are engaged in psychosocial interventions, (b) the ways in which Asian refugee communities participate and are engaged (i.e., which phases of the intervention process), (c) the impact of community engagement in these psychosocial interventions, and (d) the barriers for Asian refugee communities participating in the intervention process. Of the 43 included studies, 36 reported community members participating in the intervention or research process, primarily in intervention delivery, data collection, intervention development, and/or participant recruitment and retention. However, only 25 of these studies engaged community members in ways that gave them influence over the intervention and/or research. Additionally, only one study involved community members in both the beginning stages of deciding the research question and the end stages of interpreting findings. We recommend intervention research include more community engagement, specifically including community members in the beginning and end stages of the intervention research process. Additionally, intervention researchers are encouraged to more explicitly detail how community members were involved, how they built and maintained a research relationship with community partners, and the challenges they and community members experienced conducting community-engaged research. What is the public significance of this article? We reviewed the literature on community participation in mental health service research for Asian refugee communities. We found that researchers generally involve community members in the process of developing and delivering the intervention but not often in both deciding the research question at the beginning of the work and interpreting the findings near the end. We encourage intervention researchers to include and work with community members in all stages of the research, especially the beginning and end stages.