2023-06-19 09:50:00
On the occasion of World Refugee Day (June 20), Terra Psy-Psychologists Without Borders warns regarding the state of mental health of refugees and migrants around the world. Communiqué.
Since its first celebration on June 20, 2001, World Refugee Day has highlighted the extreme plight of the victims of forced migration. This significant date aims to pay tribute to all the people who have had to leave and flee their country to rebuild themselves elsewhere, with the hope of a better future and assured security.
Since its creation, Terra Psy – Psychologues Sans Frontières has offered psychosocial support to the most vulnerable populations, in particular exiles and refugees in France, but also throughout the world, on migratory routes and in camps.
Rym Snene, Psychologist from the NGO Terra Psy – Psychologues Sans Frontières and Mariam Barraj, project manager from the Lebanese NGO URDA, accompanied by young Syrian refugees in the Arsal camp, in Lebanon.
The mental health of refugees: a major issue
Disorders relating to the journeys of exile are multiple. They combine the traumas linked to the reasons for leaving, situations of extreme danger (wars, mass violence, torture, rape), the conditions of a migratory journey strewn with pitfalls, which sometimes lasts several years with all that the we know (life in the camps, imprisonment, various attacks, shipwrecks, etc.). Finally, the post-migration period contains its share of disappointments and disillusions, due in particular to sociolinguistic isolation, precariousness, and the wait linked to the time-consuming asylum process, which increase the stress and suffering of patients.
These travel and reception conditions create symptoms. We identify, in a large part of the exiled patients, the testimony of a painful process and symptoms of post-traumatic stress, often associated with depression: sadness, difficulty concentrating, suicidal thoughts, sleep disorders, self-devaluation, despair, psychological and physiological distress, psychosomatic disorders…
When these patients come to us, they are generally very vulnerable. In this context of precarious residence, psychological support is often not a priority and many are unable to request it.
It seems essential to us to work on this “non-demand”, and to adapt the accompaniment by proposing other intervention techniques, in order to allow these people to restore their psychic balance and help them to regain their dignity through psychological care.
Faced with inaction, we wish to warn. The mental health of refugees is a major issue. We must now act and offer essential humanitarian aid, in order to take into account this structural and systemic violence, and to promote the well-being of women, men, but also the adults of tomorrow. Mental health care is a public health priority that we can no longer afford to neglect.
TERRA PSY – PSYCHOLOGUES SANS FRONTIÈRES, Addresses: 16 avenue de Frileuse-76610 Le Havre and 16 avenue de Frileuse – 76610 Le Havre
Contact : [email protected]
1687201134
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