Youth in crisis: A cross-cultural investigation of the mental health problems faced by the young people in Lebanon and Switzerland

Swiss partners

• Université de Fribourg: Chantal Martin-Soelch (main applicant), Tanya Tandon

Partners in the MENA region

• Université Saint-Esprit de Kaslik, Liban: Nadine Zalaket (main applicant), Yara Rouhana, Elias Rahme

Presentation of the projet

Mental health of young individuals is a major concern worldwide that has been reinforced by the COVID pandemic situation. More than 20% of youths experience a mental health disorder by the end of adolescence and 45% of the global burden of disease lies in the youth age range (18-25 years). Added to that, physical pain has become a major health problem among youth in general and university students in particular, with around 30-50% suffering from it in Lebanon. However, most of the studies on this subject of mental health and physical pain and their interaction, were performed in western-oriented countries. In that framework, a previous study by our group conducted by Dr. Tandon and Prof. Martin-Soelch aimed at identifying protective factors for instance, self-efficacy, social support, and risk factors like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), stress, anxiety, and depression related to physical pain, showed cultural differences among a European country and a South-Asian country, i.e., Switzerland and India. Based on our first studies indicating strong cultural differences, it seemed important to investigate them in more cultural contexts, such as middle eastern context for instance. With this research, we will investigate the specific mental health markers i.e., PTSD, depression, anxiety, and stress, and protective factors i.e. social support and self-efficacy related to physical pain in young adults in Lebanon as well as the role of reward responses as a potential underlying mediating mechanism in this relationship using a similar design as in our previous studies conducted in Switzerland and India. We expect this project to have a beneficial effect on the mental health and well-being of university students and will provide tools for the development of easily accessible and culturally tailored preventive and/or clinical interventions that can be easily translated into scalable and largely accessible interventions and extended to the general youth population to address the strong societal and health burden represented by mental health problems in youths in the two cultural contexts.  This project, led by Professor Martin-Soelch who is a Professor in Clinical and Health Psychology, and Vice-rector for Teaching, Continuing Education, Gender Equality, and Diversity and Inclusion from University of Fribourg in Switzerland, will be developed in strong collaboration with Dr. Zalaket, head of psychology department at Holy Spirit University of Kaslik, Lebanon.