Report Reveals Half Of Children In Detention Centre Have Mental Illness

Protestors at the Let Them Stay rally in Sydney. Photo: Getty

In February, some 267 refugees - including 54 children from Nauru - became the focus of 'Let Them Stay', a nationwide campaign imploring the government to free them from detainment in detention centres. The movement went viral, and after a series of rallies and social media pushes, the group were granted the right to enter Australia.

But a government enquiry into the health and wellbeing of these refugees has proven damning: almost half of the child refugees are suffering from serious mental illness since leaving Nauru, according to Department of Immigration and Border Force authorities. The Guardian reports that some 25 of the 54 children who entered Australia in February have been diagnosed with mental illnesses including depression and anxiety. In addition to this, five of the children were diagnosed with "other long-term medical issues."

This report further confirms the recommendations of the chief medical office and surgeon general of the Australian Border Force, Dr John Brayley, who told a Senate hearing in February that the detaining of children in offshore centres was having an adverse and serious effect on their health.

“The scientific evidence is that detention affects the mental state of children, it’s deleterious," he said. "Wherever possible, children should not be in detention.”

Concerns for these children centre specifically over their capacity for resilience and to adequately cope with the horror of both fleeing their home country - often wartorn - coupled with life in a detention centre. Since the release of this government report, both human rights organisations and politicians have voiced their belief that children and their parents should be able to bypass detention centres altogether and automatically receive visas for Australia.

“Threatening to send these children to Nauru is keeping them in a state of constant fear and anxiety,” Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said. “No child should be subjected to this sort of mental torture.”