00:00Every year thousands of refugees and asylum seekers risk dangerous land and
00:11sea routes to come to Europe. Along the way they endure threats of drowning,
00:17kidnapping, starvation and brutal violence. Is arrival in Europe the end of
00:23the struggle? How do refugees cope with trauma from their journeys?
00:30I still see these things in my dreams and I wake up terrified of where I will find myself.
00:38How long do these psychological scars persist?
00:40Sometimes those traumas appear and I'm a different person, like I'm totally
00:45depressed, I'm totally out of control.
00:59Before I came here, my only fear was drowning. When I was on the boat, I remembered my son.
01:07I looked up at the sky. It was all black. Everything around me was black. Everyone was scared. The
01:14waves started to rock the boat and water started flooding in. The petrol mixed with
01:19the water. It was a horrific scene. There is nothing but water around you. Nothing
01:24but darkness and loud engine noises. People are screaming. People are crying. It's a
01:31feeling that's impossible to imagine. You have to live it. In these moments of
01:35despair, I felt like I wouldn't be able to complete my journey and that I'd be one
01:42of those people we used to hear about who drowned. Just a number mentioned in the news.
01:48Mohammed fled his home city of Aleppo more than a decade ago at the beginning of the Syrian
01:54civil war. After fleeing, he travelled to Lebanon, where he found work as a videographer and got
02:02married and had a son. Mohammed's son was born with severely restricted blood flow to the
02:08brain. As a result, he now suffers from a form of cerebral palsy and has serious physical and
02:12vision impairments. In 2024, Mohammed made the difficult decision to leave his family
02:17behind and attempt to reach Germany via the dangerous central Mediterranean crossing. If successful,
02:23his aim was to bring his family to join him so that his son could receive specialist treatment
02:28for his worsening condition. The more we delay his treatment, the less his chance of recovery
02:34becomes. All these things put a lot of pressure on me. My son is growing up and I'm not there.
02:42I've been away from him for about a year and a half. He has almost forgotten that he has a father.
02:47After crossing from Egypt into Libya, Mohammed endured weeks of inhuman treatment at the hands of people
02:56smugglers, while waiting for his chance to cross the Mediterranean on a rickety wooden boat.
03:02In December of 2024, Mohammed was pulled from the water alongside more than 260 other refugees
03:08by the Life Support, a rescue ship operated by Italian NGO Emergency. Roberto Maccaroni has been the Life
03:15Support's medical coordinator since the ship's first rescue mission in 2021.
03:20We have to give daily a general medical report to the authorities are assured. Usually,
03:27we write on our report, general condition are good. That's true on a clinical point of view,
03:36but nobody would say to these people that their condition are good. Psychological status is
03:43something that it's not easy to investigate because these people are in a condition of torture,
03:49persecution, violence since years sometimes. They bring with themselves a trauma, all of them.
03:59You start to see strange behaviors. People that stay alone, people that start crying,
04:07children that are completely silent. Nearly 250,000 people entered Europe via irregular migration routes
04:15in 2024. Unsurprisingly, trauma and mental health issues are rife among refugees and asylum seekers.
04:24A recent study among Syrian refugees found that 43% suffered from PTSD and 40% from depression,
04:31a rate 10 times higher than among the general public. Now, as Mohamed works to navigate the
04:38complicated asylum process and bring his family to join him in the central German city of Halle,
04:43he struggles with his mental health. The nightmare of his journey is never far from his thoughts,
04:50and far away from friends and family, the ache of loneliness takes a heavy psychological toll.
04:55Unfortunately, I'm currently living a very lonely life. I'm alone, I cook for myself. I sit for an
05:03hour to talk to my son, then I go back to sleep. My life is a routine. It's very lonely. A gruesome kind
05:11of lonely. Of course, if someone comes from work and finds his family there, it provides a psychological
05:20relief reduces the pressure. Life is about being around others. If a person is not able to socialize,
05:27the loneliness can kill them. Laura Lupe is a Venezuelan psychologist who traveled to Spain more
05:37than a decade ago. In the beginning, you don't exist in anyone's mind. You are alone. People feel
05:46powerless. They feel like they have no agency. Another stage starts. You start to try to
05:53integrate in the form of making new networks and connections. Community is so important
06:02and such a protective factor. It is a human experience of connection, and it is the fact that you are
06:08existing in someone else's mind. That you are not alone with your thoughts, with your memories, with the
06:15trauma. In the first month or two, I started looking for job opportunities and places to volunteer.
06:23I volunteered at a local school to teach Syrian students. We are trying to work. We are learning
06:30the language. We are doing all the things that can help us integrate into this country.
06:34One of the most challenging aspects of migrating is whether you have the ability to work. It's part
06:46of your identity. You are on a sense of purpose and that you can actually contribute to the country. You
06:51need to practically reinvent yourself, start from scratch. My psychological issues and overthinking
07:01turned into a physical illness. I could not sleep at all. And after a few days, I collapsed and an ambulance
07:10took me to the hospital. It's been like this for four months. Most of the doctors say, it's just stress.
07:17Don't overthink it. In that moment, people are just wanting to survive. And at the moment,
07:26they may not be fully registering, let's say, the experience that they're going through.
07:33Of course, I know that it's very unhealthy to keep all these stresses and experiences to myself.
07:40As a recently arrived person, I don't have much experience and I don't know where to get support
07:46to improve my mental health. Many refugees continue to struggle with severe mental health issues even
07:58years after arriving in Europe. 28-year-old Arif Mirzaad fled Afghanistan after the Taliban took
08:05control in August 2021. After arriving in Madrid on a Spanish evacuation flight, Arif faced the prospect
08:13of starting a new life without any friends, family, work or time to process what he had just experienced.
08:22The feeling of loneliness started from that moment. I was scared. I was lost totally.
08:28You get to a new country, to a new culture, to a place where you cannot communicate with people.
08:34I didn't know how to start. I didn't know what to do.
08:37One month later, two months later, begin to appear all the trauma symptoms.
08:44Maria Angeles Plaza is a psychologist with the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid.
08:50For more than 20 years, she's worked with refugees and asylum seekers in the Spanish capital of Madrid.
08:55People have to tell the painful stories and memories one again and again to the asylum office, the lawyer,
09:06the psychologist, the social workers. All that memories and its feelings are coming again and again.
09:13And that is very re-traumatising. The normal thing that refugees do is don't talk about what happened.
09:21Now, nearly four years later, Arif speaks fluent Spanish, has friends and a job he enjoys.
09:29But the traumas of his exit from Afghanistan are never far away.
09:33And the memories and experiences of his old life still cause him severe anxiety on a daily basis.
09:41The trauma, the depression appears again. And like, I want to break something.
09:46I hurt myself with needles. I lived with my disability in Afghanistan for many years.
09:53When he was 10, Arif stepped on a landmine while walking near his home in northern Afghanistan.
09:58The explosion took his right leg and nearly killed him.
10:03Growing up as an amputee in Afghanistan is very difficult. Because every day, people were treating me
10:10like I'm not a human. I get used to live with those negativity, those negative comments.
10:17I think the trauma of losing my leg as a child has also contributed to my mental health struggles
10:23as an adult. It's important to understand the whole context and understand that the body may be here and
10:32may be working, may be functioning, but the mind takes longer to catch up and to actually work through
10:39everything that has happened. A few months ago, I started having a very strange and strong panic
10:46attack. I was really scared and I went to the hospital, but they didn't take my problem seriously.
10:53All they would do was give me an appointment with a psychologist, but the appointment was not for six
10:59months. We don't have enough doctors and support. Mental health is a human right. It's important to give
11:08attention to this part of the society. These traumas, these emotions, these negative feelings,
11:16they are not going to disappear. They will be with you for a long time. I try to share my problems,
11:22my traumas with my friends, calling my family, talking with my mom, hearing the voices of my siblings,
11:30praying. There's lots of ways to relax ourselves when the anxiety, when the depression manifests.
11:36Back in Germany, Mohamed continues to struggle with the psychological burden of loneliness
11:42and uncertainty that is linked to his life as a new refugee. He knows his journey is far from over.
11:50The most important thing for me is to see my son again, to see my wife again and to live together in a
11:56safe country. Whenever I have free time, I go to a quiet place, like a lake or a river, and I think of them.
12:12Will we be reunited in the coming years or not?
12:23Will we be reunited in the soles?
12:30Will we be reunited in the Salmonese territories?
12:32Will a beautiful destination next?
12:34Will allows me in my Ultron bluff.
12:37Will there be the Mutsu the U weaves in theelets so that I got
12:38in the face of my heart? Will a beautiful tower from Barcelona.
12:42Will her come toΠ somers and some town?
12:44Will it be the most important one?
12:46Will the American μ
μ at the center?
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