Khaled Nasser
Country: Palestine
Background: Education and Mathematics
Research Project: Social Inclusion of Children with Disability
Background: Social inclusion of physically disabled children with amputations is essential for their mental health wellbeing as well as their personal identity. Since 1948, Palestine has been suffering from a long standing conflict and political instability, which resulted in unprecedented number of children with disability compared to any other country in the world. Those children are suffering from poor social inclusion and mental health status and their problem needs to be addressed. Moreover, local disability organizations are not able to secure the children’s basic needs due to the poor health and social services.
Methods: A hybrid method that combined both quantitative and qualitative techniques was adapted. Two structured questionnaires were administered to 100 children with amputations aged 12-18 years representing the main five governorates in the Gaza Strip. In addition to that children were randomly selected to represent diverse socioeconomic areas such as cities, villages, refugee camps and Bedouin communities. The quantitative data was collected using two questionnaires; GHQ12 and social inclusion questionnaire, while qualitative data was collected by 10 semi-structured interviews with experts working in the field of disability and rehabilitation.
Results: The study showed that 88% of the children’s disabilities were caused by war related incidents. On the other hand, all children both males and females are suffering from poor social inclusion and mental health wellbeing. However, males are more included and have better mental health wellbeing than females (M=3.25 for male and M= 3.61 for females). Significant sex related statistical differences were found in social inclusion (P=.000 ˂.05, 95% C.I -.499 - -.206) and mental health wellbeing (P=.000 ˂.05, 59% C.I -.354 --.1335) respectively. It was also found that the mean value of children live in refugee camps are far less included and have mental health problems compared to those live in the city and other places; they also suffer psychological distresses and poor efficacy. Finally the qualitative data showed that different factors that hinder social inclusion and mental health were identified, mainly political instability, under resourced disability organizations, lack of coordinated efforts, and negative societal attitudes towards disability.
Conclusions: From these results, it is clear that children with disability in the Gaza Strip have poor levels of social inclusion and mental health wellbeing. It was also found that females are less socially included compared to males and their needs should be addressed. Many barriers are hindering social inclusion of children with disability in Palestine were identified and therefore a high level decision making is needed to improve their situation. Finally, a new questionnaire for social inclusion was developed for the Gaza Strip which can now be used as a tool to assess social inclusion of similar contexts as well as a culturally adapted and standardized GHQ to assess mental health wellbeing.
Key words: Social Inclusion, Mental Health, Efficacy, Psychological distress, and Amputations.
Word Count: 14990