Psychological Distress and Coping Mechanisms among Internally Displaced Returnees in Yaso District, Benishangul Gumuz Regional State
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Date
2020-12
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AAU
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to assess the prevalence of psychological distress and coping
mechanisms among internally displaced returnees in Yaso district, Benishangul Gumuz Regional
State. Descriptive cross-sectional study design was employed. Data were collected using
(Kessler-10, Post traumatic stress-Checklist 5(PCL-5) and Brief Coping-28) from 378
participants recruited with simple random sampling techniques. Statistical Package for Social
Science (SPSS) version 20 was used to analyze the data. Descriptive statistics like mean and
percentage were used to summarize the characteristics of participants and findings. To look the
association between trauma and distress, Pearson correlation and linear regression was also
employed. High prevalence of psychological distress (26.4%) was found among internally
displaced returnees. In the adjusted regression model, trauma (0.45 (0.37, 0.53) p<0.001 and
marital status (1.76, (0.75, 2.78) P=0.001) were found to be significantly and positively
associated with psychological distress while sex -2.67(-4.23,-1.11), P=.001 and coping
strategies -0.15 (-0.25, -0.04) p=0.005 were negatively associated with psychological distress.
Finally the study indicated high adaptive/effective coping mechanism subscales/variables like
amalgamated and religion (M=5.59, SD=1.453) and instrumental support (M=4.53, SD=1.36)
were the most repeatedly reported respectively. Whereas denial (M=4.82, SD=1.64) and
behavioral disengagement (M=4.20, SD=1.28) were the most frequently reported under
maladaptive coping mechanism. The major inference of this study reveals that though the
returnees are relatively using adaptive coping mechanism; on contrary the prevalence of
psychological distress of the returnees is high so rehabilitation works are demanding to
minimize further mental health problems.
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Keywords
: Psychological distress, coping mechanisms, internally displaced persons/returnees.