Get Me Outta Here: Helping Western Sydney Refugee Youth Cope with Depression DISCLAIMER The following paper was developed and presented by members of the Youth Support Network (YSN), with support of the Auburn Community Development Network (ACDN) at the Refugee Youth Mental Health Forum “ Journeys of hope: Supporting the wellbeing of young refugees ” organised by NSW Centre for the Advancement of Adolescent Health on 14 March 2012. The information in this presentation is a summary of group discussions, one-to-one interviews and a limited number of survey questionnaires collected in preparation for the forum. The narrations in the presentation are not based on the story of one individual but a compilation of stories from a diverse number of youth living across Western Sydney. Get Me Outta Here: Helping Western Sydney Refugee Youth Cope with Depression "Why am I feeling like this?! I feel so isolated. I feel so stupid! I have all these people around me that I love and hang out with all the time but I still feel so alone. Like they're all strangers. Most of them have all been through the same thing, so why do I feel like I am the only one, like they won't get it? I don't want to tell anyone. I can't! I just want to hide. How can I trust anybody? If it's too much for me to carry so how can I give it to someone else?! I feel so alone in this world. Why am I even here?! I'm feeling like shit today. Not really sure why. I get really depressed sometimes and sometimes it lasts for weeks. Usually starts with my mum. I feel really bad when she gets sick or sometimes even when she gets upset about something. Last year when my uncle died, in the early morning she got a phone call from overseas. My mom started shaking and getting cold. When I woke up in the morning and found her this way I started freaking out and started shouting. The ambulance came. Mum got well after about ten days. But she looked sad and it made me sad. I was like that for a long time and blaming myself the whole time. I blame myself whenever things go wrong with mum. When I tell my mum it’s my fault I hope that it makes her feel better. For weeks I went to school and sat in a corner. I can’t focus when I am sad. My mind is somewhere else. Even when my friends come and try to talk to m e I don’t feel like it. I don’t feel like I have the right people around me. When I am sad, my family friends and relatives tell me to get over it and try to move on. And I feel like that’s not enough. I go through this a lot. I don't know why. I get angry when people try to find out what’s wrong with me. I start avoiding them and stay in my room or go to a park and stay for hours on my own. I feel better that way. I don’t like being around people when I am depressed. I think people have their own problems than having to worry about me. Everyone in my family has a high expectation of me because I am the eldest. 1 | P a g e
But when I can’t fix problems, it makes me feel weak and lots of times I thought about killing myself. It would be so much easier. But at other times I have felt sad with no big a reason. I get angry, go off on people and tell them off. I don’t eat much when I am sad and sometimes I don’t eat at all for days. I lose sleep and would just be sitting and waiting for the morning to come, hoping I will feel better tomorrow." Over the last two weeks the Youth Support Network (YSN) conducted quantitative and qualitative research in order for us to present on this topic properly. This was especially important because when we were searching for information on refugee young people living in Western Sydney and depression, we couldn't find much at all. We found lots of information on refugees and depression and on young people and depression but mostly focusing on overseas. So we decided we needed to do some basic research to get informed better. So we sent out 60 surveys to young people who were refugees or had parents who were refugees living in Western Sydney. But we only got 11 surveys back. They were completed by young people between ages of 16 to 22, 6 female and 5 male. We asked only six questions: - Have you ever had depression? - What do you do when you feel depressed? - What makes you feel better when you are depressed? - Does/did anyone know that you are/were depressed? - How did you get out of it? And - How can someone help you deal with it? We also spoke to several young people who were refugees and also conducted a focus group with the YSN. We asked everyone the same six questions. Most of them are not refugees but are either migrants or born in Australia from migrant families. The responses from the focus group and one-on-one was a lot more in-depth and helped us get a better insight. While what we found was were not surprising, we learnt some new truths about young people, refugees and depression. This is what the refugee young people said: - 10 people out of the 11 people who filled in the survey said they have been depressed at some point. The young people we spoke all had depression with two still in depression. - What things people do when they are depressed varied but most people said they talk to other people. Some young people said they just get angry or watch TV. - Some people found this question hard to answer but those who did said that the thing that helps them feel better when they are depressed is taking a break from what they are doing that might be causing them to stress, playing or hanging out with friends, sleeping with the most common response being they like to talk to someone. - Only 3 out of the 11 people who filled in the survey said that nobody knows when they are depressed. - How people said they got out of depression also varied. People said they got out of it by 2 | P a g e
listening to the positive things teachers said to them and ignored the negative comments they got from their friends, go for a walk, playing sport and thinking a lot. One person said they got out of it by running away from home. - In response to how someone can help them deal with depression, most of them said “ listen and talk to them ” or “ leave them alone ”. One person said that if someone can’t really help, the best thing for them to do is at least not make things worse by adding to their sufferings. What we also found from the focus group: - Some young people had no idea what depression actually was or the different types of depression that there is. Feeling a little sad could be depression but because peoples understanding of depression was different, this also meant that some people when they are actually depressed don't think or know it's actually depression. - Young people aren't suffering from depression, they are living with it. For many people it has become a way of life and is usually long term. It may vary in how bad it is but this depends on what is happening in the person’s life at the time, for example breaking up with a boyfriend, having a fight with someone important or when there is a crisis at home like mum is sick or a death in the family here or overseas but many young people live with depression for a long time. Most young people however have no idea why they are depressed. - Labelling refugee young people as refugees makes things worse for them. It further isolates them and makes them feel like they are supposed to feel depressed or act a particular way. People who work with refugees treat them in a particular way and young people don't like it. One thing we won't ever do again is send out a survey targeting only refugee young people because we know from the very small sample and low response rate to the survey that it's hard enough talking about it. "If you're from overseas, you want it to be like back home. You might have been a refugee but you had everyone around you, and refugees still had good times where they felt they had someone looking after them and laughing with them, making them forget they are refugees. So young people need to have a good time to be reminded of those memories". - While refugee young people have unique life experiences, such as losing one or both parents not necessarily due to war, which can cause significant feelings of abandonment for example, or growing up in refugee camps with little or no water or food or shelter, or seeing family members dying in front of you or doing the killing yourself, while these experiences are unique to refugees, we found that not all refugee experiences are the same for young people and therefore the causes of depression aren't the same. But also that the experiences of depression and the feelings of isolation, helplessness, hopelessness, suffocation etc. are the same for all young people, refugee or not. What young people do or don't do about it is also the same. - You may never be able to help someone get rid of depression so you need to face the fact that sometimes all you can do is help them deal with it or reduce it or in many cases prevent it. Finding out what people are interested in or helping young people find out what they're interested in and getting them involved in it is a good start. People have different ways of hiding their depression so getting them involved in an activity they are interested in is a great way of getting the depression to the surface where you can find ways of helping young people cope. But the help provided to young people should also be hidden or invisible so you're helping them without them really knowing. 3 | P a g e
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