“Informed Consent in the Refugees and Immigrants Mental Health Researches – A Qualitative Systematic Review and Recommendations”

“Informed Consent in the Refugees and Immigrants Mental Health Researches – A Qualitative Systematic Review and Recommendations”
Fatemah Samir Alghamdi
Arab Journal for Scientific Publishing, January 2022
Open Access
Abstract
The refugee and migration crisis is at its most critical consideration in history. Millions of people fled their countries to save their lives from armed conflicts or natural disasters that impacted their mental and physical health. This article aimed to map out the body of published articles in the refugees’ and immigrants’ researches to highlight the method of informed consent process that is crucial for the Institutional Review Boards. This research systematically reviewed published literature between 2010 and 2020 on acquiring informed consent among refugees and immigrants. This systematic review was conducted in the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), PschInfo, EBSCO, and PubMed using Preferred Reporting Items of Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework to identify the process of informed consent in researches that addressed mental health and related issues among refugees and immigrants. A total of 32 qualitative and quantitative research genres were reviewed to highlight the informed consent procedure in refugees and immigrants researches between 2010 to 2020. The current research found out three themes: a third party involvement, participants’ educational level, and ethical violation in the informed consent process. Also, this research suggested the multifaceted informed consent to maximize their search outcomes and elude ethical violations.