The Psychosocial Health of Shan Children in Northwest Thailand

We administered the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) to 51 Shan refugee children from Burma who are living in northern Thailand, and collected life histories from 11 of their families. Of the sample, 63% of the children were stateless, and none were Thai citizens. About 30% of the children had normal peer relationship subscores—a number well below Thai norms after correcting for multiple comparisons (p < .001). However, their overall functioning was not different from the Thai population as a whole