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This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

SO413

Primary care utilization among Syrian refugees and the general Norwegian population: a register-based cohort study

PRIMARY CARE UTILIZATION AMONG SYRIAN REFUGEES AND THE GENERAL NORWEGIAN POPULATION: A REGISTRY-BASED COHORT STUDY

Syrian refugees are more likely than the general Norwegian population to make at least one primary care visit, but among those who access care, the total number of visits and, in particular, mental health service utilization remain lower.

As general practitioners in Norway act as gatekeepers to specialist services, this study aimed to compare primary care utilization among Syrian refugees during their first three years of resettlement with that of the general Norwegian population and to identify sociodemographic predictors of utilization within the refugee cohort. A nationwide longitudinal register-based cohort was established using data from the Norwegian Primary Care Registry and Statistics Norway; 10,165 Syrian refugees aged 18 years and older and 8,427 individuals from the general population were followed for three years. Visits were analyzed by ICPC-2 chapter using a two-part hurdle model (adjusted odds ratio, aOR, for any visit; adjusted incidence rate ratio, aIRR, for the number of visits among service users), with adjustment for sex, age, education, marital status, income, and settlement size, and a Bonferroni-corrected α of 0.0056. Across all chapters combined, refugees were more likely to have at least one visit (96.0% versus 94.0%; aOR 2.11), but had fewer visits among those who accessed care (aIRR 0.78). Refugees had higher odds of visits in the digestive (aOR 1.57) and social problems (aOR 1.92) chapters, whereas both the odds of a visit and visit frequency were lower in the mental health chapter (24.2% versus 28.3%; aOR 0.65; aIRR 0.30); the aIRR for visit frequency in the neurological chapter was 0.44. Within the refugee cohort, the aORs for any visit and for a mental health visit were, respectively, 4.26 and 0.68 among women, 1.84 and 1.58 among those aged 40 years and older, and 1.31 and 0.40 among those with a spouse (reference groups: men, those aged 18–29 years, and those without a spouse; p < 0.001). Mental health visits increased over time, with higher odds in the third year than in the first year (aOR 2.56; all p < 0.001). The low utilization of mental health services despite a high burden of mental disorders suggests that distress may present as general, digestive, or social complaints and highlights the need to address mental health needs early after resettlement; limitations include the use of primary diagnoses only, the inability to equate utilization with need, and residual confounding.

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