2023-09-09 21:03:00
For the vast majority of migrants, the land route between South and Central America and Mexico to the United States is usually the cause of multiple physical and emotional wounds. Although they flee violence and political, economic and environmental instability in their countries of origin, the journey in search of well-being and security is plagued by multiple risks and threats. Thick jungles, endless mountains, mighty rivers, extortions, fines, kidnappings, sexual violence, discrimination and countless economic hardships; These are some of the risks to which those who take this path are exposed.
This is what Nancy* tells it, a Venezuelan woman who fled with her husband and little daughters from the scarcity in Venezuela to look for a new life in the United States. Although they were fortunate enough to reach a shelter in Mexico City unharmed, she remembers with horror the crossing through the Darién, the thick jungle that divides Colombia from Panama and which is for thousands of people the beginning of the journey to the north of the continent. “Having exposed my daughters to all these dangers and seeing so many people suffering terrible things has traumatized us,” she says.
Marcela* did not have the same luck as Nancy and her family. This Honduran woman had to flee with everything she was wearing to save her life and along the way she was a victim of assault and sexual harassment. Although it was a traumatic experience for her, that is not currently the main concern of hers. “There are many days when I have had to walk for hours and go a long time without eating in search of a job. For me, the most difficult thing right now is getting money to survive,” she explains from one of the shelters in Mexico City where she has lived for a few weeks.
Like Marcela and Nancy, thousands of migrants in this city bear the impacts of the road, aggravated by the scant response from the authorities that should guarantee them the protection and humanitarian assistance to which they are entitled. “In Mexico City, these populations face difficulties in accessing shelter and obtaining basic means of subsistence, and in many cases they even end up homeless. Furthermore, they suffer limitations in access to medical and psychological care services appropriate to their needs,” says José Antonio Silva, coordinator of the migrant care project at Doctors Without Borders in Mexico City.
MSF is one of the humanitarian organizations trying to close these gaps, especially in access to health care. Through mobile clinics that travel daily to different shelters in the city, the organization’s professionals identify people who require priority assistance to channel them into the public system, or serve them directly when it comes to mental health. In these cases, the fact that a large part of them are passing through the city imposes an additional challenge in providing this assistance.
“Given the limited offer of services and the little information available regarding this issue, one of our priorities in the shelters is to get closer to people, promote our activities and inform regarding the importance of mental health. “This is how we find the people who need us most,” says Sebastián Miranda, one of the MSF psychologists. Thanks to this method, between January and August of this year MSF has carried out 381 mental health consultations with migrants in Mexico City.
Nearly 60 percent of the population on the move states that the main reason for consultation is having been a victim or witnessed an act of violence. The three main diagnoses found in consultations are anxiety-related disorders 44.9 percent (including acute reactions to stress), depression 26.6 percent and post-traumatic stress disorder 10.5 percent.
Using tools such as “the stressometer,” which helps name the various symptoms of this sensation, people are able to identify the factors that are negatively affecting their emotional health and express them openly in the consultation. It was one of these techniques that allowed one of Nancy’s daughters to find the cause of a discomfort that had plagued her since they arrived in Mexico. The change she noticed in her daughter was such that she also agreed to request a consultation with the MSF team. “I was able to let off steam and I also felt well advised, following that I felt much better,” admits Nancy.
“In addition to continued exposure to violence from their places of origin and along the way, migrants also see their emotional health affected by precarious living conditions, economic scarcity, family separation and the uncertainty of their situation,” Miranda explains. “That is why we try to make our consultations effective and precise in the sense of finding the cause of psychological distress, dissecting it and from there obtaining the most beneficial tools for people.”
“Every day in our work we realize the impacts of migration on people’s mental health and the importance of expanding access to comprehensive care in this regard,” says Silva. Marcela, who is following a therapeutic process with MSF to work on the emotional effects that the migratory experience has caused her, agrees with this: “There needs to be more doctors on mental health and that it not be a taboo in society, because getting treatment Mental health is like taking care of your physical health, if you are not good in both you are not happy with yourself,” he concludes.
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