Independent analysis of an article

Independent Analysis

Article: Piwowarczyk, L. A., & Keane, T. M. (2007). Impact of September 11 on refugees and those seeking asylum. Transcultural psychiatry, 44(4), 566-580.

Piwowarczyk and Keane (2007) investigated the effects of 9/11 on refugees and asylum seekers in United States of America (USA). The study also explored their concerns, differences in effects between asylum seekers and refuges, coping strategies adopted, and differences in impacts between Non-Muslims and foreign-born Muslims. This article is significant to my project in the sense that it provided an account of religious practices (e.g. prayers) as a coping mechanism used by the respondents. This source will be used to add evidence of applicability of the concept that Islam and its religious practices can be used to cope with post 9/11 traumatic experiences.

The key concepts for example “most common form of coping was prayer”, and “minority students tended to rely more on faith-related means of coping” discussed and evidenced with references in this article are more relevant to my project and will help justify the use of religious practices to cope with post trauma effects.

This work is related to Abu-Raiya, Pargament, and Mahoney (2011) in that both work on the same key concept of religious coping i.e. use of religious practices to cope PTSD and other traumatic experiences. Both consider religious practices as contributing to coping. Moreover, the target populations of both the studies appear to have faced the same traumatic situations. Similarly Meisenhelder (2002) like the other two investigated the benefits of religious coping and its implications for treatment of PTSD among 9/11 trauma victims.

Both Tice, Peterson, and Huang (2005) as well as Constantine and Colleagues (2005) used in this article seem to investigate concepts and elements related to religious coping among 9/11 victims. Both are available online and can be critically analyzed to fetch information that may add further insight into my project.