Associations of stressful life events with stress symptoms and well-being of adolescent refugees: mediation by post-migration stressors and protective resources?

Objective: This paper focuses on the relationship between stressful life events experienced by young refugees and their reports of psychological and somatic stress symptoms and well-being. It examines whether this relationship is mediated by personal and social resources and by acculturation hassles experienced in the host country.

Methods: Path analyses were calculated based on data from 147 adolescents aged 11 to 18 years from the Middle East after their flight to Germany to test the proposed mediation model.

Results: The number of experienced stressful life event types was directly linked to current psychological and somatic stress symptoms. The association with psychological stress symptoms was partially mediated by acculturation hassles experienced in the host culture. Well-being was not related to stressful life events but showed significant associations with available social resources. A closer inspection of the mediation by acculturation hassles showed that discrimination hassles and socio-cultural adaptation hassles are important mediators in the relationship between stressful life events and the included outcome variables.

Conclusion: The results indicate that stressful life events as well as resources and acculturation hassles should be considered in measures to improve the adjustment of young refugees.