Child sexual abuse and youth mental health distress are major public health challenges in Greenland. Since the 90’s The Greenland Population Health Surveys have demonstrated how the high prevalence of adverse childhood experiences is significantly associated with suicidal behavior. To this day Greenland still struggles with one of the world’s highest suicide rates since the occurrence of suicides increased in the late 60’s and reached the epidemic level.
More specifically we have shown that while 51% of youth in Greenland aged 15-34 years experienced a low level of adversities during childhood, just above one third grew up being extremely exposed to violence and alcohol problems. Almost everyone in this group reported both of these adversities, and just under 50% had also been sexually abused before the age of 18. This indicates that a large proportion of youth in Greenland are in a very vulnerable position.
Purpose
This project proposes to investigate opportunities and barriers engaging communities in a participatory study to investigate how large and small communities in Greenland are working to prevent and respond to child sexual abuse and strengthen mental health supports and services to youth.
Method
The method consists of three phases. Phase 1 will provide an overview of problem and response at the national level using descriptive data and document analysis. Phase 2 will cover a data collection in 1 small and 1 large community identified in Phase 1. In Phase 3 the data will be analyzed and discussed in dialogue with the two communities involved in the study as well as at the national level following the principles of Community-Based Participatory Research. One additional community visit to each participating community will be planned to ensure this dialogue can take place in a culturally relevant setting.
Project period
2022-2024