Evaluation of relationships among stressfull life events, resilience, self-esteem and psychiatric symptoms in syrian refugee adolescents

Resilience is defined as the dynamic processes which involves positive adaptation while facing multiple adversities. Self-esteem as an holistic evaluative dimension of the self includes assessment of oneself. The studies investigating the relationships among stressfull life events, psychological resilience, self-esteem and psychiatric symptoms for Syrian refugee adolescents are rare. Our study which is a cross-sectional population research shows predictions among variables based on R-models. The sample of our research consists of 1070 volunteering Syrian refugee adolescents between 12-18 years who live in Mersin and who are medically stable and healthy. All Syrian refugee adolescents are assessed by the Child and Youth Resilience Measure CYRM-12, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, Reaction of Adolescents to Traumatic Stress Questionnaire-RATS, the Stressfull Life Events Checklist-SLE, Hopkins Symptom Checklist-HSCL 37-A in Arabic versions. Our analyses show that there are statistically meaningfull relationships between socio-demographic features of Syrian refugee adolescents (i.e., her/ his mother/father alive or dead, her/his mother/father working position, her/his age, her/his working position, her/his school attendance etc.) and their psychiatric symptoms. Generalized linear model for mediation is applied to answer our research expectations and this model indicated that self-esteem and resilience mediated the relationship between stressfull life events and reactions to trauma, stressfull life events and anxiety, stressfull life events and depression, stressfull life events and externalization. Results of moderation and covaried moderation analyses shows that resilience moderates the relationship between stesssfull life events and reactions to traumatic stress, stressfull life events and depression but not between stressfull life events and anxiety, stressfull life events and externalization. In additon self-esteem does not moderate the relationship between stressful life events, and symptoms of anxiety, depression, externalization and reactions to traumatic stress. Key words: resilience, self-esteem, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, externalization, stressfull life events, refugee adolescents