In former Yugoslavia, more than four million people are estimated to suffer from on-going and severe psychological symptoms of post-traumatic stress having experienced traumatic events related to war and migration in the 1990s. Whilst some patients receive different forms of care in specialised centres, the majority of the people affected do not seek treatment. This project aims to understand the barriers to treatment and coping strategies of people that do not seek treatment use and to evaluate how existing treatment programmes change patients’ symptoms, quality of life and social functioning. It also identifies how costs of treatment are linked to outcome.

It will bring together a critical mass of researchers utilising complementary expertise from member states and Balkan countries. The findings will help to design rehabilitation programmes for current non-treatment seekers and improve the cost-effectiveness of treatment programmes in specialised centres.

Objectives

• The project aims to provide an empirical basis for designing care programmes for people suffering from posttraumatic stress following war and migration in the Balkans who currently do not seek treatment, and to improve the cost-effectiveness of treatment programmes for those patients who are cared for in specialised centres

Specific objectives are

• to understand why most people suffering from posttraumatic stress do not seek treatment and what coping strategies they use
• to establish to what extent research results gained in populations who took refuge outside the post war area apply to those who stayed in the Balkans
• to benchmark what outcomes, i.e. drop out rates and changes in symptoms, quality of life and social functioning, are to be expected for different subgroups of patients in specialised centres
• to identify treatment components that are associated with better outcomes across centres
• to establish estimate how the costs of individual care packages for patients in specialised centres are linked to outcome