This article offers a critical exploration of the concept of resilience, which is largely conceptualized in the literature as an extraordinary atypical personal ability to revert or ‘bounce back’ to a point of equilibrium despite significant adversity. While resilience has been explored in a range of contexts, there is little recognition of resilience as a social process arising from mundane practices of everyday life and situated in person-environment interactions. Based on an ethnographic study among single refugee women with children in Brisbane, Australia, the women’s stories on navigating everyday tensions and opportunities revealed how resilience was a process operating inter-subjectively in the social spaces connecting them to their environment. Far beyond the simplistic binaries of resilience versus non-resilient, we concern ourselves here with the everyday processual, person-environment nature of the concept. We argue that more attention should be paid to day-to-day pathways through which resilience outcomes are achieved, and that this has important implications for refugee mental health practice frameworks.

Digital storytelling refers to a 2 to 5 minute audio-visual clip combining photographs, voice-over narration, and other audio (Lambert, 2009) originally applied for community development, artistic and therapeutic purposes, and more recently adapted as an arts-based research method. To date, no systematic review of the use of digital storytelling in a research capacity, to generate information about a phenomenon has been conducted. Accordingly, our aim was to provide a systematic review of digital storytelling in research. The review identified 25 articles representing 23 discrete studies that met inclusion criteria. A thematic analysis of results indicated that digital storytelling in research was especially appropriate for use with marginalised groups, and was most commonly used in this context. There was some variation in the extent to which digital storytelling in research adhered to the principles with which it was originally developed. Surprisingly, although digital storytelling provides a ready-made knowledge translation product, few research projects employed the digital stories generated to this end. Across research projects, participants reported several benefits of digital storytelling. While some disadvantages were noted, overall, these were outweighed by the benefits of using a respectful, participatory research practice.

This paper reflects on the wider potential of digital narratives as a useful tool for social work practitioners. Despite the multiple points of connection between narrative approaches and social work, the influence of narratives on practice remains limited. A case study of a digital storytelling (DST) process employed in a research project with a small group of lone mothers from refugee backgrounds is used to trigger discussion of broader applications of DST as part of everyday social work practice. The use of DST acknowledged women's capacities for self-representation and agency, in line with participatory and strengths-based approaches inherent in contemporary social work. The benefits of using DST with lone mothers from refugee backgrounds illustrate how this method can act as a pathway to produce counter-narratives, both at the individual and broader community levels. Documenting life stories digitally provides the opportunity to construct narratives about experiences of relocation and settlement as tools for social advocacy, which can assist social workers to ensure meaningful outcomes for service users. These propositions can serve to inform social work practices with people from refugee backgrounds and address some of the intricacies of working in diverse and challenging contexts.

Purpose: This paper aims to reinforce the significance of visual ethnography as a tool for mental health promotion.Design/methodology/approach: Visual ethnography has become an established methodology particularly in qualitative studies, to understand specific themes within participants’ everyday realities. Beyond providing a visual element, such methods allow for meaningful and nuanced explorations of sensitive themes, allowing richer sets of data to emerge rather than focussing on conversations alone. The participants in this study evaluated how far they had come by exploring complex circumstances using visual ethnographic means.Findings: Research with single refugee women in Brisbane, Australia, demonstrates how discussing photographs and creating digital movies yielded a sense of achievement, pride and accomplishment, health and wellbeing, and ownership for some women, while for others it was a burden.Originality/value: Studies with single refugee women have been scarce with limited use of visual ethnographic methods. Visual ethnography is particularly suited to understanding refugee narratives, as complex experiences are not always conveyed through textual representations alone.

There is growing evidence that participatory music can be supportive and empowering for marginalised, culturally diverse populations. Amid largely hostile reception of asylum seekers in Australia, a group of music facilitators regularly attends an Immigration Transit Accommodation facility to share music and singing activities with detained asylum seekers, to counter significant mental and emotional distress resulting from indefinite detention. Methods This paper outlines the key themes of a narrative analysis, from a health and wellbeing perspective, of music facilitators' monthly written observations recorded in 2012. Results By drawing on examples from observational narratives, we outline a framework that suggests links between music and singing, and the health and wellbeing of detained asylum seekers. The framework includes four intertwined concepts: (1) Humanisation, (2) Community, (3) Resilience, and (4) Agency. Conclusions The framework suggests the potential for participatory music to counter the significant impact of traumatic experiences and detention on asylum seekers' health and wellbeing.

Despite increasing numbers of refugee women-at-risk being resettled and their potential vulnerability, there exists no empirical research into the psychiatric health of this unique subgroup with which to guide policy and practice. This research aimed to investigate psychiatric symptom status of a sample of refugee women-at-risk recently resettled in Australia, as well as factors contributing to symptoms of trauma, anxiety, depression, and somatization. The level of psychiatric symptomatology is compared to reference groups of women from Sudan and Burma, who entered Australia under the Humanitarian Entry Programme, and who did not meet criteria as women-at-risk. This is a cross-sectional survey of 104 refugee women-at-risk across several ethnic groups including a demographic questionnaire, the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire, Post-migration Living Difficulties Checklist, and Hopkins Symptom Checklist to assess individual factors, traumatic experiences, post-migration problems, and symptoms of trauma, anxiety, depression, and somatization. A series of multiple hierarchical regression analyses examined factors predicting psychiatric symptoms. Substantial proportions of participants reported psychiatric distress in symptomatic ranges, including for traumatization (41%), post-traumatic stress disorder (20%), anxiety (29%), and depression (41%), as well as significant symptoms of somatization (41%). These findings are significantly higher than those derived from reference groups of women from Sudan or Burma, resettled in the same area and utilizing a similar methodology. Higher numbers of trauma events and post-migration living difficulties predicted higher trauma, depression, and somatic (but not anxiety) symptoms. Having children predicted higher trauma, anxiety, and somatic symptoms. Greater English fluency predicted higher anxiety symptoms. Region of birth predicted anxiety and depression symptoms. Age predicted trauma and anxiety symptoms. Findings suggest that recently arrived refugee women-at-risk are at high risk of psychiatric disorders. The results indicate a need for comprehensive psychiatric assessment to identify women in need of treatment very early after resettlement, with implications for medical practice, service delivery, and policy programs.