AUSTRALIA
Golda Signal and her family arrived in Perth when she was eight years old after time in a Ugandan refugee camp.
She struggled a great deal with trauma and stress in her first years in Australia, but had no idea where to turn. "I couldn't find words to communicate … so I spent all of my high school life keeping to myself and there were a lot of self-destructive behaviours that I engaged in," Ms Signal said.
Pavitra Aran is a culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) youth worker based at headspace in Armadale in Perth's east, where one-third of the population were born overseas. She said the service was trying to do more to let young people know that mental health care was available to them.
Headspace's research has found that many young people did not know how to talk about needing help and were ashamed to ask for it.
"While 25 per cent of young people in Australia identify as CALD, out of 255,000 young people that we have helped at headspace since we started, only 7 per cent have been CALD young people," Ms Aran said. When CALD clients did come in, it was more likely they would be brought in by a school counsellor or youth worker than their parents.
"Most people said that they wouldn't want their family to know," Ms Aran said.
The Armadale headspace office organised gatherings specifically for young people from culturally diverse backgrounds.
Golda Signal hoped that sharing her story would show other young people that it was fine to ask for help.
When she and her parents and siblings arrived in Perth, they were initially elated to be safe and resettled, but found themselves isolated and lonely. "We didn't go out and do things, we didn't explore, none of that happened," she said.
"Even though the space was so big and we were free to do whatever we wanted, we were still in a survival mode of thinking that it's better to stay home. It's safer for us to do that.
"Back home, going to school was a risk. The only people I knew were my siblings, I didn't have friends."
When she got to high school, her feelings became much worse but she had no idea where to turn. "I thought I was doing pretty well, but even little things like stress from assignments would send me into really bad spirals," she said.
She also felt like admitting how she was feeling would be seen as a weakness by her family and she was not sure her school counsellors would understand. "In my head I thought if I go there they might call my dad, or send me back [to Uganda], there were so many things they might do," she said. "They don't do that, but I wasn't told that."
She continued to tell herself that her problems were not serious, and looking back, she can see that made things worse. This is an attitude she hoped Headspace could help overcome.
"It's that sentiment of saying, 'It's not that bad' that lets issues grow," she said. "It leads to a lot of bad things and self-harming behaviour that we don't talk about in our community."
By Hilary Smale and Emma Wynne
21 October 2016
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-21/tackling-mental-health-for-young-migrants/7955472
