From Persecution to Prison - Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of ...

For example, one subject reported feeling sad, lonely and anxious whilein detention but did not request medication because:I saw others who asked for medicines but they were heavily drugged.They sleep all day and are really out of it, so I didn’t want it.The Benefits of Volunteer VisitorsMany detainees noted that volunteer visitors provided significant relief, interms of stress reduction and increased morale. For some detainees, visitsrepresent a welcome distraction from the boredom of repetitive anduneventful days. Others were comforted by being able to voice their anxietiesto people who, unlike their fellow detainees, were not burdened bythe same stresses of confinement. Those who complained of feelingdemeaned and/or criminalized by their incarceration also described visitsfrom sympathetic individuals as humanizing, and said they provided whatoften felt like a lost connection to society. One detainee who, after beingreleased from detention, returned to visit those he left behind, explained,In detention you only discuss about the cases, court, always the samething. With the outside visitor you can forget a little bit about the insideof detention, because you can discuss other subjects. It makes you startto think your life outside will be, and maybe you will think about thefuture outside instead of always worrying about being sent back home.…They come to comfort you, and even if you are sad you will try to bestronger to please [the visitor], try to forget a little about the sad life youhave in detention, and that affects your morale.Many detainees described extreme loneliness caused at least in part bya concern that no one, besides the INS, knew where they were or that theywere being detained. This fear is exacerbated by the indefinite length oftime in detention that detainees face, as well as the high-security confinementof most of the centers. One young man, who was detained in a criminalfacility and shared a cell with a convicted murderer, was eager for ourresearchers to document his whereabouts.Nobody knows me. I say, if something happened, nobody knows me.Detainees who received visits from volunteers described a profoundsense of relief and renewed courage simply because an outside personknew of their situation and might also realize if they were to be transferredor deported.For all of these reasons, detainees also expressed gratitude for visitsfrom attorneys and doctors doing pro-bono evaluations. Several individualsin this study were transferred, at least for some period, to a facility aMENTAL HEALTH OF DETAINED ASYLUM SEEKERS 81