Get Me Outta Here: Helping Western Sydney Refugee Youth Cope with - - PDF document

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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
• verseas. 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 me 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.

2 | 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
• ther 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

3 | 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.

4 | P a g e "You need to make something more welcoming, a place that you belong to, a place where you can be yourself, where people treat you like normal human beings, having fun and mucking around." We also think that the best people to help young people cope with or prevent depression are other young people. By being more supportive and understanding, by sharing their own experiences or feelings which are often the same and by just being around. Young people can also be other young people’s worst nightmares simply by being critical. A shared purpose in a positive environment helps. "Having friends always makes you feel better or just chilling out by yourself sometimes works." "Having faith in god or someone or something also works." "YSN is not for everybody but it does help people cope when I am not feeling good and it's the best way to stop me from getting depressed." So what is YSN, what are their experiences of depression and why is something like YSN so crucial? Youth Support Network was formed almost three years ago with the main aim of empowering young people to support other young people and giving young people from all

• ver western Sydney a space and a platform to be themselves, to speak openly and safely

and have their opinions heard and to be part of decisions and activities that are important to them. It has grown tremendously since it started. It has 29 members coming from 18 different cultural backgrounds aged between 12 and 25. While many of us were born here, there are also members who have had experiences of migration through living and travelling through countries and finally settling in Australia. We meet regularly, once a week and even more during holiday times and have come to know each other well. Even new members quickly feel at home. Members are either in school or uni and we share common experiences around school and family and hence are able to relate to each other. We have come to understand that, all of us go through the same thing from exams to personal issues, from little things to big stuff. And we also know when one of us is going through longer periods of low mood. We have grown so close that the mood of anyone of us affects the general mood of the group, just like a family. There are many of who we know experience long low mood

• periods. You can tell when they come in with sad face or when they get easily annoyed or

when they easily tell people off. Or they just sit in one of the rooms at ACDN with the door closed, or just sit in a meeting and you know they are not there. Or when they disappear from meetings. We know that there are members who go through this a lot, both who have had difficult life experiences as refugees as well as those who were born here. "I was really depressed and I came in and could sense everyone noticed it. So I just left. But I know I can speak to specific people in the group that makes me feel better, whenever I feel ready to talk. It always helps." But there are also times when the group doesn't know what one of us is going through. They might come in feeling really low but because everyone is very positive, they have forgotten their troubles for a while.

5 | P a g e "Being a part of YSN is great because it’s a place you can go to forget about things or talk to someone if you want to. There is always someone you can talk to here. Everybody has someone they feel comfortable talking to in the group." We have come to learn that just talking to someone helps a lot. Some of us don't like to speak at these times, and that's ok. "I know I can't give advice and I shouldn't. When I know someone is feeling down, I go and just speak to them, just talk about other things to divert their mind or share my own experience if they want to listen. I myself speak to people who make me feel happy and it helps being around people who are positive." When we notice someone is very low, we stay close and one of us might speak to them about things. But there are also people you can't talk to – it’s not only a trust thing but not everyone is the same. "I would never go up to my teacher about these things, even though I know they might be able to help. But I don't feel confident - it feels that they won't care enough." A lot of us won't go for counselling. Some of us have been to counsellors. "It feels like they don't relate to you and you know what answers they expect and you just give them the right answers and get out of there. They see so many people, you don't matter to them." "You can't see them when you really need, they only see you at fixed times." We know that none of us are trained counsellors yet and some of us will be one day and some of us will never be. But we also know that young people are special. We are different in the way we think and the way we deal with things like depression. We know that no matter where a person comes from or why they are depressed, with a little bit more understanding and a lot more research about the what where why when and how, and of course with a lot more YSN there will be a lot less young people trapped inside their mind screaming "get me outa here!" Thank you.