Post-resettlement context matters: a qualitative study of refugee parents’ responses to child trauma in low-resource settings

Background: Despite evidence that post-resettlement socio-environmental factors affect parenting, refugee parents’ experiences of meeting children’s posttrauma needs in resource-poor settings remain severely underexplored.Objective: This study aimed to explore parental understanding of child distress, caregiving responses, and support seeking in the context of displacement and resource limitations in Iran, one of the world’s largest refugee-hosting countries.Methods: Thirty refugee parents were recruited from deprived communities in Iran. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and questionnaires. Parents were mainly from Afghanistan, most were illiterate, and all reported at least moderate PTSD symptoms. Data were analysed using thematic analysis.Results: Findings showed that parents lacked a basic understanding of the emotional consequences of trauma and associated psychological difficulties. Parents described extreme uncertainty about how to respond to their child’s needs after arrival, as well as limited insight into those needs, coupled with a severely limited capacity to support their children and lack of access to wider resources. Post-resettlement stressors appeared to trigger harsher, reactive parenting in the post-migration context relative to pre-migration parenting. Material deprivation also shaped parent–child interactions: many children withheld trauma-related mental or physical consequences to avoid healthcare costs, and some adopted parenting-like roles to support their caregivers. Finally, parents’ priorities were wholly focused on material needs essential for their children’s basic survival, rather than psychosocial support.Conclusion: Our findings provide novel insight into the profound influence that markedly low-mental health literacy, material deprivation, and limited internal and external resources have on how parents understand and respond to their child’s post-trauma needs in low-resource post-resettlement settings. Interventions that support parents to build mental health literacy and resources to respond to their child’s needs are indicated.