MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st March, 2021) Over three quarters of Syrian refugees suffer from serious mental health problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and struggle to find support, UK charity Syria Relief said in a report published on Monday and cited by The Guardian.
A survey was conducted on 721 Syrians living in refugee camps in Lebanon, Turkey and Syria's north-west city of Idlib. Over 80 percent of respondents identified at least 7 out of 15 key symptoms of PTSD, around 40 percent have 10 or more PTSD symptoms.
"Of the 721 people, across all locations who returned the form, 88% of people have experienced at least one life threatening event and at least one PTSD symptom and thus need to be seen by a medical professional," the report said.
The worst situation is in Idlib, where internally displaced Syrians show PTSD symptoms in 99% of cases, the survey found.
"Whilst the world concentrates its attention towards fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, Syrians are gripped by a mental health epidemic which the world is ignoring, just like many of the aspects of this decade long conflict," the NGO's chief executive, Othman Moqbel, stressed.
According to the survey, only 15 percent of respondents from Lebanon believe they have any access to a mental health support system, in Idlib this number is even lower � 1 percent.
The goal of the survey was to draw the attention of the international community towards the unseen mental health crisis in the region and urge countries to invest more into mental health support systems for refugees.
"We are calling on donor governments and international bodies to increase funding for mental health projects conducted by NGOs, like Syria Relief and our colleagues URDA and UOSSM, it is clear from the data in this report that the issue is extremely prevalent and the people affected feel adequate support is not there," the report concluded.
Since the start of the conflict in Syria in 2011, over 5.6 million people have fled the country and 6.6 million have been internally displaced.
