The vast majority of participants screened positive for anxiety disorder meriting referral for a mental health evaluation: nearly all participants (92.1%) living on Samos, 80.0% of the respondents from the Ritsona camp, and approximately three-quarters of respondents from Katsikas camp, Hotel Ioannina and Athens hotel (74.6%, 75.0%, and 76.0%, respectively). Studies documenting the types and levels of violence experienced and the prevalence of anxiety and other mental health disorders among Syrian refugees during their displacement and resettlement are lacking [12, 13]. The key for Syrian Christians is to get into a European country. Participants interviewed in the qualitative study said that the lack of guidance and information on asylum procedures increased their feelings of uncertainty about the future, which was taking a toll on their mental and psychosocial well-being. The study highlights a high prevalence of positive screening using this anxiety disorder tool. 2017. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=56466#.WTBdXOvyipo. Posted by. 12 EU countries have national lists of safe countries of origin. Now all our procedures are stuck and when we go to the asylum office to ask, they do not allow us to enter and they give us no information at all. Transcult Psychiatry. Depending on the site, between 31% and 77.5% reported having experienced at least one violent event in Syria, 24.8–57.5% during the journey to Greece, and 5–8% in their Greek settlement. Furthermore, research has demonstrated that lack of legal assistance and long asylum procedures are important risk factors for anxiety and psychological distress among asylum seekers in high-income countries [24, 25]. Arsenijević J, Schillberg E, Ponthieu A, et al. 2017;9. http://www.unhcr.org/news/updates/2017/2/58b449f54/desperate-journeys-refugees-migrants-entering-crossing-europe-via-mediterranean.html. Furthermore, psychological trauma from witnessing severely distressing events constituted up to 13.3% of the violent events reported in Turkey. Since 2015, Europe has faced an unprecedented arrival of refugees and migrants. Once we heard that many Syrians escaping Idlib were travelling the length of Turkey to try and get into Europe – Turkey having decided to no longer stop refugees trying to access Europe – we went straight to the border. EU resettled some 15,000 refugees out of a planned 160,000. https://www.rt.com/news/376753-eu-refugee-resettlement-plan/. Syrian refugees in limbo on Turkey-Greece border - YouTube. The survey consisted of a structured questionnaire on experience of violence and an interviewer-administered anxiety disorder screening tool (Refugee Health Screener). This includes forced detention, violence, torture, and even witnessing death. Humanitarian and political assistance is urgently needed to curb the violence and provide structured protective, medical, and psychological support. During their travels, refugees and migrants often face harsh conditions, forced detention, and violence in transit countries. Accessed 1 June 2017. The ongoing Syrian war continues to account for the largest number of new refugees and internal and external displacements worldwide [6]. The majority of participants aged 15 years and older were married or in unions and a large proportion (42.6–81.8%) had achieved at least secondary education. The datasets used and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. Cite this article. The proportion declining referral was higher (31.4%) on Samos and lower (18.3%) at the Athens hotel. The Greek police have arrested each of the refugees who entered their country. Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. For the primary outcome (violence experienced) estimated at 50%, assuming 5% precision, a 5% confidence level and a 10% non-response rate, we estimated a sample size of 250 individuals per site. Basics of qualitative research (3rd ed. Accessed 1 June 2017. Google Scholar. European Commission. To our knowledge, this is the first study conducted in Greece using a mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology to describe experiences with violence and the prevalence of anxiety disorders amongst Syrian (and other) refugees and migrants. While this may reflect the truly astonishingly high levels of distressing events encountered by this population, it may also be that the tool is too sensitive and not specific enough for a refugee population living in difficult material conditions with high levels of recent trauma [19]. Little did we know this would soon become a regular occurrence. Some had been detained, and others not only lost property but also family members and no longer felt they had any reason to remain at home. The Refugee Health Screener-15 (RHS-15): development and validation of an instrument for anxiety, depression, and PTSD in refugees. His family is Greek Cypriot, so he wants to visit relatives in Greece. The European Union claims that the refugee pact with Turkey has been a success. KB, PM and SC participated in the supervision, study design, literature search, data interpretation, and manuscript writing. They drown in the Mediterranean sea. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Once in Greece, they find a broken immigration and asylum system. Similarly, participants were threatened with guns by the smugglers and shot at by the Turkish Coast Guard when crossing by sea from Turkey to Greece. Of these, 49 per cent were Syrian, 21 per cent Afghan and eight per cent Iraqi. During the journey (excluding in Syria), between 24.8% (Hotel Ioannina) and 57.5% (Samos) of interviewees experienced at least one violent event. Ibrahim Saban left Syria … Most persons of concern were coming from Afghanistan, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Iran. Child Dev. Many of them have relatives in countries like Germany, Sweden, Holland and Belgium and they are desperate to leave Greece after their terrifying journey to get to the country in the first place. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The majority of participants experienced at least one violent event in Syria, ranging from 30.8% of those at Ritsona camp to 77.5% at the Samos hotspot. Most of us have someone in Europe, a child or a husband, otherwise we could go back to our country: We prefer to die 60 times and not to be stuck here. Then they started whipping me. ): Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. Any participant who screened positive was informed of the benefit of seeing a mental health professional and provided with a free referral to an on-site psychologist employed by MSF. 54% Upvoted. The perpetrators of the violence in Syria were mainly the regime or Daesh: [Daesh] brought me to in a room, where I had to turn against the wall and raise my arms. A few nights beforehand, he told us, Greek border police had stripped and beaten him, stolen his clothes and the 800 euros he had on him. A report published in 2016 by the organization Human Rights Watch has specifically documented and condemned abuse from the Turkish police and coast guard against Syrian refugees [18]. Since April 2019, the regime in Damascus has launched a number of military offensives aimed at reconquering the province of Idlib in the country’s north-west, with the overall goal of reclaiming the whole of Syria’s territory. Comparisons of proportions were performed using a chi-squared test. The prevalence of participants’ experience with at least one violent event, according to location of occurrence, gender, and age, is presented in Table 2. Under the deal, the EU and Turkey agreed that all new migrants crossing from Turkey to the Greek islands after 20 March 2016 would be returned to Turkey if they were not applying or not eligible for asylum, or were asylum seekers whose application was considered inadmissible in the EU [8]. About one-quarter of participants in Ritsona and Katsikas camps and Hotel Ioannina declined referral. IOM - Mixed Migration Flows in the Mediterranean and Beyond. We wish to acknowledge the extraordinary endeavor of the courageous and resilient field staff and translators, who completed this survey in extremely difficult physical and emotional circumstances. Hollifield M, Eckert V, Warner TD, et al. While war, violence, and harsh conditions during the journey stood out as traumatic experiences for most, the qualitative study participants emphasized that their current lives as refugees in Greece and the uncertainty about their futures were especially detrimental to their mental well-being. http://www.amnesty.eu/content/assets/Reports_and_Briefings_2015/Libya_is_full_of_cruelty.pdf. Curr Psychiatry Rep. 2016;18:82. Of the 1293 consenting participants, 728 (56.3%) were from Syria and analyses were restricted to this population. The questionnaire was complemented by a pre-validated anxiety disorder screen (the Refugee Health Screener 15 or RHS-15) [14, 15], to detect symptoms of anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder, and was administered only to individuals aged 15 years and older. Jihane Ben Farhat, Pia Juul Bjertrup, Rebecca M. Coulborn & Sandra Cohuet, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, UK, Médecins Sans Frontières Greece, Athens, Greece, Médecins Sans Frontières France, Paris, France, You can also search for this author in Unsurprisingly, the report also highlights high levels of anxiety and distress in this population, compounded by lack of information on legal procedures and uncertainty about the future. Their new lives and identities as refugees were very different and poor compared to their previous lives in Syria before the civil war. All you can hear is screaming, ammunition and sound grenades; all you can smell is smoke, teargas and the rancid conditions in which people here are forced to live. Overview of statistical practice . BMC Medicine When you have to stay [a] long time in line just to bring food to your children. Barriers to reporting sexual violence among Syrian populations have been documented [28]. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. While the new life situation as a refugee in Greece was already difficult, not being with family members or other social support networks further worsened the situation. We conducted a cross-sectional population-based survey combining quantitative and qualitative components. The EU27, it appears, care more about keeping refugees out of Europe than preventing them from becoming refugees in the first place. There is the misconception that it is mainly young men at the border. It is also possible that sexual assault might not be that common on the routes we described, compared to refugees and migrants traveling through other areas, such as Libya [29]. 2005;46:67–80. http://www.unhcr.org/news/latest/2015/12/5683d0b56/million-sea-arrivals-reach-europe-2015.html, http://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean, http://migration.iom.int/docs/2016_Flows_to_Europe_Overview.pdf, http://migration.iom.int/docs/Q1_2017_statistical_Overview.pdf, http://www.unhcr.org/news/press/2015/12/567918556/million-refugees-migrants-flee-europe-2015.html, https://www.iom.int/sites/default/files/situation_reports/file/Mixed-Flows-Mediterranean-and-Beyond-Compilation-Overview-2015.pdf, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-16-963_fr.htm, https://www.rt.com/news/376753-eu-refugee-resettlement-plan/, http://www.unhcr.org/news/updates/2017/2/58b449f54/desperate-journeys-refugees-migrants-entering-crossing-europe-via-mediterranean.html, http://refugeehealthta.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/RHS15_Packet_PathwaysToWellness-1.pdf, https://www.interventionjournal.com/sites/default/files/Mental_health_of_refugees_and_displaced_persons_in.5.pdf, http://refugeehealthta.org/webinars/mental-health-screening-and-care/refugee-mental-health-screening-operationalizing-the-rhs-15/, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=56466#.WTBdXOvyipo, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2016/country-chapters/turkey, http://www.msf.org/sites/msf.org/files/report_vulnerable_people_201016_eng.pdf, http://epicentre.msf.org/sites/preprod.epicentre.actency.fr/files/1134_Report_Greece_Vulnerabilities_Refugees_Apr17_Final.pdf, http://www.amnesty.eu/content/assets/Reports_and_Briefings_2015/Libya_is_full_of_cruelty.pdf, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-018-1028-4. As in 2015, the worsening of the refugee situation in Greece and Turkey today stems from an escalation in the (civil) war in Syria. Among men and women, similar proportions of violence experienced were observed but across all sites, a greater proportion of the older age group reported a violent event. I was pregnant, eight months pregnant. (Woman from Syria). Depending on the site, between 31% and 77.5% reported having experienced at least one violent event in Syria, 24.8-57.5% during the journey to Greece, and 5-8% in their Greek settlement. It was of someone lying dead on the floor, a few hundred yards away from where were standing. In the fall of 2015, Essam Daod was standing on the beach in Lesbos, Greece, when a crowded rubber dinghy packed with refugees landed ashore. More must be done to place Syrian refugees; conflict sees worst violence in months. This thread is archived. Living or having lived in poor housing conditions for several months (tents, containers, etc.) Over 1 million migrants arrived, many of them Syrian refugees, entering the Greek islands via Turkey. When crossing into Greece by land, participants also faced violence if caught.
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