Psychiatric Symptoms Associated with Brief Detention of Adult Asylum Seekers in Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: To examine the association between brief detention and psychiatric symptom levels among adult asylum seekers. METHOD: The Harvard Trauma Questionnaire and the Hopkins Symptoms Checklist-25 were used to assess psychiatric symptoms and premigration trauma exposure in 122 detained and 66 nondetained adult asylum seekers in Montreal and Toronto. RESULTS: After a mean detention of 31 days, the proportion of asylum seekers scoring above clinical cutpoints was significantly higher in the detained than the nondetained group for posttraumatic stress (χ² = 4.117, df = 1, P = 0.04), depression (χ² = 13.813, df = 1, P < 0.001), and anxiety (χ² = 4.567, df = 1, P = 0.03) symptoms. Hierarchical multiple regression models showed that posttraumatic stress, depression, and anxiety symptom levels were significantly higher among detained asylum seekers than among the nondetained comparison group, taking into account previous trauma and demographics. Incremental F was significant for the addition of detention status for all 3 models, indicating that detention contributed to increased symptom levels. CONCLUSIONS: For asylum seekers, even brief detention is associated with increased psychiatric symptoms. Governments should consider the many viable alternatives to incarceration of asylum seekers, such as temporary placement in a supervised residential facility, to minimize the risks of psychological harm to this vulnerable population.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".