• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

information for practice

news, new scholarship & more from around the world


advanced search
  • gary.holden@nyu.edu
  • @ Info4Practice
  • Archive
  • About
  • Help
  • Browse Key Journals
  • RSS Feeds

Friends as Family: Using Composite Psychotherapy Case Material to Explore the Importance of Friendships for Unaccompanied Adolescent Refugees Coping with the Challenges of Resettlement in Ireland

Abstract

Given the absence of family support and the depth of shared experiences, friendships for unaccompanied adolescent refugees often take on ‘suffused’ functions which blur the boundaries between conventional friendship and family roles. This study explores the ways in which such friendships help unaccompanied adolescent refugees to cope with the migration journey and the challenges of resettlement in Ireland. Innovative composite case material was constructed from my reflections on my psychotherapy work with 33 unaccompanied adolescent refugees (engaging in an average of 16 sessions each), as recorded in a reflective clinical journal and portrayed in eco-map photographs between 2016 and 2020. Reflexive and polytextual thematic analysis identified four themes, which captured the deep emotional and experiential bonds of these friendships, their importance in helping these young people to cope with the stressors of resettlement, perceptions of friends as proxy family, and the importance of God as a friend.

Read the full article ›

Posted in: Journal Article Abstracts on 07/01/2022 | Link to this post on IFP |
Share

Primary Sidebar

Categories

Category RSS Feeds

  • Calls & Consultations
  • Clinical Trials
  • Funding
  • Grey Literature
  • Guidelines Plus
  • History
  • Infographics
  • Journal Article Abstracts
  • Meta-analyses - Systematic Reviews
  • Monographs & Edited Collections
  • News
  • Open Access Journal Articles
  • Podcasts
  • Video

© 1993-2023 Dr. Gary Holden. All rights reserved.

gary.holden@nyu.edu
@Info4Practice