Content area
Full text
Internally displaced persons (IDPs) are persons or groups of persons who have been forced to leave their homes or places of habitual residence in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized State border. IDPs experiences risk of physical attack, sexual assault, and abduction and frequently are deprived of adequate shelter, food and health. Thus experiencing traumatic events can cause different types of mental health disorders among the IDPs populations. Mental disorders are conditions that causes disturbance in thinking, feeling, mood, and behavior. Depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc. are the mental health issues which are very much common among the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPS). Numerous literatures have indicated that individuals who were internally displaced experienced higher rates of mental health problems than people who were not displaced. In this backdrop, the present paper is an attempt to provide a systematic review of evidence about the mental health issues of the IDPs across the globe. Further this study also tries to suggest some measures for enhancing mental health and well-being of Internally Displaced Persons.
Keywords: mental health, internally displaced persons, mental illness
Forced relocation, war, conflict and human rights abuses have caused a higher rate of internal displacement. Internal displacement describes the situation of forced displacement in which people have been forced to leave their place of residence within their own country. Millions of people were forced to be displaced from their home or places of residence due to violence, conflict, disasters, developmental projects, climate change etc. and remain displaced within their own country. According to Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), at the end of 2019, some 45.7 million people were internally displaced due to human rights violence, armed conflict, and generalized violence. India consistently is one of the highest in the world to experience the level of disaster displacement and in absolute term it is the highest in South Asia (NRC/IDMC, 2010). Between 2008 and 2019, an average of around 3.6 million people a year was displaced and the majority of them experienced flooding during the monsoon. India also faces sudden and slow-onset hazards like tsunamis, earthquakes, cyclones, storm surges and drought (Ginnetti &...