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Toby Measham

Publications and source records attributed to Toby Measham.

4 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Caring for migrant and refugee children: challenges associated with mental health care in pediatrics.

This article reviews aspects of the mental health care of migrant and refugee children. It highlights the challenges of access to care for these children and of considering the role of pediatricians in their mental health care. It also looks at the sources of differences in presentation of mental health issues of migrant youth when compared with dominant culture youth, examining the contributions of culture, context, and the families' own views. Models of care will be described that have tried to elicit a better understanding of the difficulties migrant and refugee children may encounter. Some avenues through which we may expand our current psychiatric models of care will also be addressed. These avenues include the use of interpreters and cultural brokers, addressing the debate around ethnic matching between therapists and patients, promoting a sensitivity to otherness and mediation, and looking at the importance of time issues.

Canada↗
PubMed2004

Remaking family life: strategies for re-establishing continuity among Congolese refugees during the family reunification process.

The restrictive immigration and refugee policies of many Western countries force most refugee families to remain separated for long periods. Although there is much discussion among professionals in the community and the clinical milieu about the problems families encounter after reunification, the strategies employed by refugees to restore family life have not been paid much attention. This longitudinal study documents the pre- and post-reunification experiences of 12 refugee families from the Democratic Republic of Congo in Montreal. Our results suggest that family separation can be understood as an ambiguous loss, in that the temporary absence of other family members cannot be fully acknowledged because of the perpetual uncertainty and permanent risk to them. Memory work, in the form of shared family memories, attenuates the pain of the absence. Once reunited, family members must re-establish continuity in spite of the many denied rifts between them. The capacity to recall a personal, familial or collective history of previous separation and loss appears to be protective, as if the memory of life's discontinuities provides an opportunity to recreate a partial sense of continuity out of repeating experiences of chaos.

Adult↗