Editorial: Improving Evidence-Based Mental Health Care for Refugee and Internally Displaced Children: What Works and Why?

There has been a rapid increase in the number of displaced children over the past decades due to armed conflicts, violence, and natural disasters. In 2024 alone, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimated that 53.2 million children were forced to flee their homes, which is about triple the estimate of 2010.1 These children experience a multitude of stressors both before and during their displacement, including poor living conditions and serious risk of emotional, sexual, and physical abuse. Unsurprisingly, sustained exposure to such stressors places these children at heightened risk for developing substantial and often multifaceted emotional and behavioral difficulties. Anxiety, depressive, and trauma-related disorders, for instance, have shown estimated prevalence rates ranging from 13.81% to 22.71%, which are substantially higher than those observed in the general population.2 This finding underscores that the care required for these children extends well beyond meeting basic needs such as safe shelter, adequate nutrition, and financial stability. Rather, adequate mental health care needs to be an integral component of the broader care infrastructure for children and their families, both in high-income countries offering refuge and within facilities operating in the regions affected by the conflicts or disasters, the latter of which are often overlooked.