UNHCR has warned that the consequences of coronavirus are taking a "huge toll" on the mental health of refugees, displaced and stateless people and urged countries to make responding to this a priority.
Many migrants and refugees are struggling to get by in Greece. The coronavirus pandemic has made things even worse, as many aid services had to close down or reduce their services. Here is a list of places you can still turn to, if you need food, shelter, medical advice, and the like.
Migrants and refugees in need of therapy are being forced to wait months for treatment, or missing out altogether, a professional organization of psychosocial centers in Germany says. The organization says there are not enough funds to treat the thousands of migrants suffering from trauma.
Tens of thousands of people have set out from West and Central Africa in recent years in the hope of reaching Europe. Not all have completed the dangerous journey – opting instead to retrace their steps and return to their families. But going home brings new risks – including being seen by the community as ‘a failure’.
The fact that the Afghan suspect behind the deadly knife attack in Lyon suffered from mental health problems has highlighted France’s overall challenge of providing migrants with psychological traumas the appropriate care. While some migrants remain unaware of the benefits of seeking help from a psychologist, others suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), or are simply impossible to follow-up on because they are continuously on the move.
Traumatized refugees in need of psychological care have to wait over seven months in Germany before they are granted therapy. The long wait periods were reported in response to an official inquiry submitted by the Left Party (Die Linke).
Claire Paccalin on the Greek island of Lesbos meets a family struggling to keep their lives together while living in the Moria refugee camp.
A project in Naples financed by the Italian government's Department for Equal Opportunities is using ethnopsychology to assist migrant women who have suffered violence and trauma.
The Italian federation of medical guilds has presented a free online training course for Italian doctors to help them treat patients who have suffered physical or psychological trauma from their migratory journeys.
Young refugee men have difficulties starting their new lives in Germany, with the media often portraying them as violent aggressors. A study finds that they not only have psychological trauma from surviving war and persecution but also face fresh mental health issues linked to a failure to integrate into society.
Most refugees in Germany aren't used to talking about their trials and tribulations. But even if they wanted to, psychological help is often hard to come by. One initiative at the anchor center for asylum seekers in Schweinfurt, Bavaria tries to change that with psychosocial peer counselors. We visited the center to find out more about the project for refugees by refugees.
Can you create art out of the traumas many refugees had to undergo to reach Europe? An exhibition in a small village in northwest Germany sponsored by the Malteser charity is doing just that in hopes of helping refugees to process their experiences.