Mental Health in Child Refugees

For this blog I was trying to pick something that is not necessarily seen in the media. You hear about refugees “taking our jobs” or how we have lowered the budget because we need more money for OUR country’s problems. All of those issues are more talking about how refugees may affect us and how we as a population, who seems to lack a natural sense of caring for others, need to take care of ourselves. I was curious though and wanted to focus more on the refugees themselves as actual people and not some burden we have been stuck with. The topic I found the most interesting was mental health, specifically in children, that are raised or sometimes even born in refugee camps. Mental health may not be top of the list when speaking on the topic of refugees. I was curious as to how refugees or those seeking asylum may be affected in the process of becoming a refugee and being placed in a refugee camp. Finding articles for this topic was not difficult as there have actually been recent studies of mental health found in children and young adults in refugee camps.

First I just want to give you all a small look into just how many people can be affected with mental illnesses. For example in America, 1 out of every 5 people will be diagnosed with a mental illness. Of the 40 million people that are diagnosed with a mental illness, 8.2% of those are children. Compared to the U.S however, the average amount of children diagnosed with mental illness, such as PTSD and major depressive disorders, can be from 50% to 90% depending on the refugee camp location. This to me was alarming and just sad to learn. These children, most that had to flee their country at a young age, have only known the stressful life of living in a refugee camp. They as small kids, sometimes infants, were fighting for their lives even before most of them could read.

It has been found this alarming statistics stems from a few very important aspects that may go unnoticed. Children in refugee camps will likely give up their cultural norms, having to learn the language of the country they were placed in. Having to immediately give up everything you’ve ever known as normal can wreak serious havoc on a young and already confused child’s mind. Another major cause is most of these children may have experienced some traumatic event such as witnessing death/murder or seeing their country torn apart by war. Another issue is forced family separation. Children and adolescents are often separated from their families and at the mercy of others for care and protection. 

Although mental illness has been noticed as a problem in refugee camps the next issue is treatment. With a lack of money comes a whole other set of issues. Also things that don’t allow us to properly communicate, such as language or cultural barriers make it almost impossible to properly treat mental illness. Until we can create a better quality of life for those in refugee camps, I believe the mental health problems found in refugees will only make it harder on these people who already have it hard enough as it is.  

Birman et al. “Mental Health” RefugeeHealth, Technical Assistance Center, 2011 

Silove, Derrick, et al. “The contemporary refugee crisis: an overview of mental health challenges.” World Psychiatry, John Wiley and Sons Inc., June 2017.