Narrative Exposure Therapy Intervention and Management of Memory Intrusion Symptoms of Traumatic Stress among Young People in Kakuma Division, Turkana County of Kenya

Abstract

Kakuma refugee camp is currently the home of 196,666 people who fled from their various countries due to civil war and organized violence. Young people form 20% of this population. These young people live with constant reminders of negative memories of their traumatic experience. Against this background, this study sought to assess the young people’s traumatic stress with the use of post-traumatic stress disorder checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5) tool. The study adopted narrative exposure therapy framework and intervention for traumatic stress management. The study used quasi-experimental research design whereby the researcher adopted a non-equivalent groups design. This design involved one treatment group and one control group. The study sampled 110 participants through multistage cluster and proportionate sampling. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data with the aid of statistical programme for social sciences (SPSS) version 23. Independent sample t-test was used to list the statistical significant differences between the means in the pre-test and post-test scores for the groups. The researcher established that Narrative exposure therapy intervention was effective in management of memory intrusion symptoms of traumatic stress among young people in Kakuma division, Turkana County of Kenya.