Belonging and Connection to School in Resettlement: Young Refugees, School Belonging, and Psychosocial Adjustment

TLDR

Schools are a primary and influential service system for young refugees, and there is growing interest in school‑based mental health services to reduce stigma and improve treatment access. The study aims to investigate how refugee students experience school belonging and its relation to psychosocial adjustment among resettled Somali adolescents. The authors examined school belonging and psychosocial adjustment in a sample of 76 Somali adolescents resettled in the United States. Greater school belonging was linked to lower depression and higher self‑efficacy—accounting for over a quarter of the variance in self‑efficacy—while showing no association with PTSD, indicating that enhancing school experiences may benefit mental‑health programs for young refugees.

Abstract

Schools are one of the first and most influential service systems for young refugees. There is a burgeoning interest in developing school-based refugee mental health services, in part to reduce stigma and increase treatment access for this population. Despite the relevance of gaining a better understanding of how refugee students experience schools in resettlement and how this relates to psychosocial adjustment, belonging and connection to school have not been previously investigated among a population of resettled refugees. This study examines school belonging and psychosocial adjustment among a sample of 76 Somali adolescents resettled in the United States. A greater sense of school belonging was associated with lower depression and higher self-efficacy, regardless of the level of past exposure to adversities. Notably, more than one-quarter of the variation in self-efficacy was explained uniquely by a sense of school belonging. School belonging was not significantly associated with posttraumatic stress symptom severity and did not moderate the effect of exposure to adversities on psychological adjustment. These results suggest that investigating ways of improving school experiences would be particularly useful in the effort towards continued development of school-based mental health programs for young refugees.