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A young Iraqi refugee is still afraid to make friends for fear she will lose them Published August 4, 2010 |
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Yasmeen Al-Gailani remembers the day when her friend's father was kidnapped in Baghdad a few years ago. Although his relatives paid a ransom, he was later found dead in the city. The news of the kidnapping came through a telephone call. Now she says she gets a weird feeling in her stomach every time she hears the phone ring.
"Sometimes I am afraid that if I pick up the phone someone will tell me that one of my relatives will die," she says.
Nineteen-year-old Yasmeen came to Canada with her family a year ago as an Iraqi refugee through the United Nations refugee agency. She spent three years in Jordan just before arriving here, but her experience of the Iraq war is something she still caries with her to this day.
"Death became a normal theme in our life, which is not normal for normal people," she says, adding that every day she would find out about someone she knew who was killed or kidnapped. Her own family had been threatened several times.
Yasmeen is not the only one facing these types of issues. Many refugees from war-torn countries, who succeeded in leaving conflicts and tormenting life-styles behind, still carry with them the scars of these experiences in their minds.
Mental health issues are not uncommon among refugees. But addressing these issues needs to become common practice, experts say.
More resources should go in training settlement workers in recognizing mental health cases to help newcomers fully integrate in Canadian society, they say.
After arriving in Canada, Yasmeen settled with her parents and younger brother in Hamilton, Ont. She started attending Mohawk College to improve her English. It was during her work on a presentation on Iraq that she realized how deeply the war affected her.
Yasmeen had been keeping a diary for the last nine years, a collection of her experiences and thoughts that she chose to put down on paper. But, about three months ago, following a bit of hesitation, she ripped to pieces every single page of her diary notebooks.
"Every time I started writing in it, I got into the mood, all [my] emotions got into this piece of paper," she says. "And when I was reading the diary I was able to have the same mood, the same feeling. I would have the same sadness again."
Now, without writing, she says she still struggles with her emotions. Incidents come flooding back to her memory, unexpectedly.
She remembers some men approaching her as she was leaving school one day in Baghdad, asking her to follow them. They were planning to kidnap her. But she narrowly escaped because her father's driver, who was waiting to pick her up, fired his gun -a few times in the air.
After hearing bombs going off in Baghdad and people screaming, Yasmeen has now become sensitive to loud noises. "And the problem is people around me don't understand that," she says. "I tell them 'Please, lower your voice, or the TV.' I feel I became more sensitive now."
When asked whether she made any new friends in Canada, she simply answered: "Unfortunately, yes." It scares her that she has new friends.
Yasmeen says she doesn't want to get attached to anyone anymore, because she understands how quickly she can lose her friends, and how those relationships can make her more sensitive.
But she says her life did change a lot since coming to Canada. There is one particular moment she remembers: learning about human rights at school.
"The first basic human rights is the right to live," she says. "I started crying hysterically [when I heard this] because in Iraq we never heard about this, people don't have this right."
Another big—and visible—change in Yasmeen was her decision to start wearing the hijab since coming to Canada. She has become more religious in the last year, praying regularly and looking at life differently.
She said she feels more valued as a woman when she is wearing the hijab, and associates her decision to turn towards religion with the decision to become a better person. However, she says she knows people are scared to approach her and ask her why she is wearing the headscarf.
"It's very hard in this society. Sometimes we go with the flow just to be accepted, but maybe for her survival, she really needs to show her identity," said Martha Ocampo, manager for education and resources at Across Boundaries, a Toronto-based mental health centre for newcomers. "Perhaps becoming more religious was a way for her to really help herself deal with some of her issues."
Refugees' cultural and spiritual problems are not fully acknowledged by the mainstream settlement agencies, so many people are not advised properly, Ms. Ocampo says.
For those newcomers, including landed immigrants, who were traumatized by certain events prior to coming to Canada, the struggle to accommodate to a new life adds another level of trauma, she says. Basic problems such as finding affordable housing, employment or a good school for children can re-enforce mental health problems.
"When they come to us they are often showing symptoms of depression, sleeplessness, not wanting to be with the family, no motivation, withdrawing from society, or some are even delusional and starting to experience very sever psychiatric symptoms," Ms. Ocampo says. "We don't know if this is mainly caused by the current trauma they are experiencing, or both past and current trauma."
The general public is not aware about the mental health issues faced by refugees, Ms. Ocampo says. The media often portray refugees in a negative light, which makes their societal integration more difficult, she added.
Ms. Ocampo says she has been receiving many calls from settlement agencies lately, asking her for advice on how to handle mental health cases. The problem is that settlement counselors don't have the right skills in place, she explains.
"[The advice I give them] is probably a drop in the bucket in trying to deal with this," she says. "I think it is the problem of the government to really provide appropriate resources for these agencies."
The issue is not a new one, she says. Ms. Ocampo points to a 1988 report by the Canadian Task Force on Mental Health Issues Affecting Immigrants and Refugees, which the federal government created precisely to document such issues. The report was based on numerous public hearings that highlighted the factors that lead to increased mental health problems for newcomers.
"All those things were recognized then, but nothing was done about it," Ms. Ocampo says, adding that "we are failing" in our efforts to help newcomers with trauma-related problems.
Only now is the government recognizing starting to acknowledge some of the problems, she says.
Officials from the Department of Citizenship and Immigrantion Canada did not respond to media requests by deadline.
Yasmeen says she decided to deal with her issues by herself, instead of seeing a specialist or using counselling services.
"I think I will be able to understand myself more than the specialist," she says. "I discovered that telling people about the experience doesn't make me feel better. It takes a lot of effort from me, and courage, to rationalize everything. It's also the fact that I don't want to be trapped to memories and live in the past."
In fact, she says her pain might in fact be helping her to act.
Yasmeen says she wants to try to connect with youth from other war-torn countries to learn their stories and maybe help them somehow.
After finishing high school, she plans to join McMaster University in the medical radiation sciences to study ultrasonography.
agurzu@embassymag.ca
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