Symposia
Oppression and Resilience Minority Health
Phyu Pannu Khin, M.A. (she/her/hers)
University of Vermont
Burlington, Vermont
Despite increasing wars and armed conflicts globally, we have a limited understanding of political violence survivors (Pedersen, 2002). What are the mechanisms of resilience, hope, and protective factors amidst ongoing trauma in the context of humanitarian crises? Our current study aimed to address this gap by examining a sample of trauma survivors from Myanmar who have experienced devastating consequences of the 2021 coup d’etat. We followed WHO best practice recommendations in designing this cross-cultural research through forward-and-back translation procedures and a culturally-responsive design (Robine & Jagger, 2003). In partnership with local organizations in Myanmar, we designed this mixed-methods project to study resilience-promoting factors of the Myanmar people, a historically-underserved community living through the world’s longest civil war of the last 70 years (Kaicome, 2019).
Through community-based collaborations and snowball sampling, Myanmar survivors were recruited to complete an anonymous online survey through two stages of data collection. The first stage is a pilot trial (N=22) including Myanmar coup survivors living in the United States who completed the survey and provided feedback on the research design and methodology. Secondly, the main study is currently collecting data (N=120) from the coup survivors currently living in Myanmar and in displaced communities in and around the Thai-Myanmar border. The anticipated date of completing data collection is April 2023. The survey includes gold-standard questionnaires as well as open-ended questions on trauma, mental health symptoms, resilience, and personal sources of hope amidst ongoing violence. Guided by the prior literature on political violence survivors across different nations, we hypothesize that Myanmar participants may report significant resources of hope and remarkable signs of resilience—a theme that many survivors report amidst humanitarian crises (Hobfoll et al., 2009; Summerfield, 1999). Preliminary findings from the pilot trial support this hypothesis; thematic analysis of qualitative data suggests that the unique themes of resiliency and sources of hope for Myanmar people include spirituality, family, and pro-democracy political commitment. Data from the main study will be similarly examined through a comprehensive thematic analysis and via quantitative analyses. Both clinical and cultural considerations will be included in presenting our study’s findings and potential intervention strategies.