How do you assist younger Afghan refugees heal? A brand new program in Maine provides a approach

It’s midafternoon, and Shabana Siddiqui has simply hopped into an Uber.

Siddiqui, who’s from Afghanistan, moved to the US together with her husband in 2022, and for the previous couple of years, she’s labored in Maine with a mission serving to different Afghan refugee households with kids.

On at the present time, Siddiqui is visiting a household she’s been working with for a couple of months. The dad and mom moved to the U.S. in January with their two youngest sons, ages 19 and 12.

The household spent greater than two years dwelling in concern beneath the Taliban. “When the government collapsed and the Taliban took over, they were really scared for their lives,” explains Siddiqui.

However since their arrival in Lewiston, the 12-year-old boy has struggled with signs of hysteria and post-traumatic stress, says Siddiqui.

“One day he was at school and he got pushed by a bully,” she says. “It triggered him so much that he started crying and he even had a panic attack. And he called his mom and he was like, ‘Mom, can you come pick me up? I cannot breathe.’”

Analysis reveals that when individuals fleeing violence and persecution resettle in a brand new nation as refugees, the toll of the trauma they’ve been by can hang-out them for a very long time. Kids are particularly susceptible. The poisonous mixture of previous traumas and the stresses of resettlement places such youngsters at a considerably increased danger of long run psychological well being challenges, researchers say.

“We know from years of research that children exposed to violence, separation and loss due to armed conflict and forced migration have elevated risks for problems with depression, anxiety, traumatic stress reactions,” says Theresa Betancourt, director of the analysis program on kids and adversity at Boston School.

Research have proven that charges of despair amongst refugee and asylum-seeking kids vary from 10% to 33%. and post-traumatic stress dysfunction (PTSD) charges vary from 19% to 53%. Nervousness problems are additionally prevalent with charges starting from 9% to 32%.

A double burden for folks

Mother and father or major caregivers can buffer towards these long-term psychological well being penalties, however refugee dad and mom are sometimes battling their very own psychological well being and hesitant to hunt care, says Betancourt.

“Parents may feel stigma in mentioning their own struggles with problems like depression or anxiety,” she says. “And they may be concerned about discussing their child’s emotional behavioral problems, too.”

That’s why Betancourt and her colleagues launched an effort to help refugee dad and mom and youngsters in the US, as a solution to stop long run psychological well being and behavioral issues. It’s an effort run collectively by Boston School and the native non-profit Maine Immigrant and Refugee Companies within the Lewiston-Auburn space.

“We’re really trying to work with the family a lot earlier with a prevention focus and a mental health promotion focus,” says Betancourt.

Their strategy employs individuals like Siddiqui who share the identical language, tradition and lived expertise with newly arrived households. Siddiqui and her colleagues obtain coaching to offer evidence-based emotional, social and sensible help to oldsters and youngsters. The organizers have used it efficiently in resettled Somali Bantu and Bhutanese communities in Maine. Now, they’ve tailored that resolution for not too long ago resettled Afghan households in Maine and Michigan.

The shadow of previous traumas

The Uber drops off Siddiqui on a large, tree-lined road in Lewiston with large homes on both facet. She walks as much as a home and knocks on the entrance door. A lanky boy with large eyes and thick, black hair opens the door and greets Siddiqui in Dari, their shared language.

That is Mujib Ur Rahman, the 12-year-old Siddiqui informed me about. His dad and mom — Khadija and Mohammad Rahmani — are ready upstairs, exterior their first ground condo. They greet her with smiles and an effusive welcome in Dari.

“You go there as a friend and you build [a] rapport, so they can easily share everything with you,” Siddiqui says.

The Rahmanis welcome Siddiqui into their rental condo. Khadija brings out a big silver platter full of dried apricots and almonds, and two thermoses stuffed with cardamom tea, earlier than settling into the couch subsequent to Mujib and Shabana. Her husband, Mohammad, sits throughout from them on a chair.

The household is from Afghanistan’s third largest metropolis, Herat, the place Mohammad owned a small grocery retailer. They nonetheless have a home in Herat with a giant backyard the place they grew greens and fruit.

Mujib remembers spending most of his summer season evenings doing the factor he cherished most.

“After I came home from school, I would play with kites on the roof of my house,” he says.

He significantly loved kite preventing together with his neighbors. It’s a beloved custom in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan and India, the place individuals attempt to lower others’ kite strings with their very own and set others’ kites free. (Though it is a bit controversial as a result of the strings are generally coated with glass and different components to sharpen them; the Taliban has banned the observe.)

“When they saw me flying kites, they would take down their kites,” says Mujib, beaming as he brags about his kite-fighting abilities. “There was one who rivaled my skill and I could never free his kite. We were in competition.”

However life as Mujib knew it got here to a halt in 2021, when the Taliban took management of the nation.

“They did a lot of scary things right in front of people’s eyes,” he says, his voice getting softer, extra hesitant as he remembers that point. ”For instance, hitting and stabbing individuals with knives, arresting them. I assumed they’d come to my dwelling and arrest me and beat me, too.”

His mother, Khadija, had been a well known nurse and ladies’s rights advocate of their neighborhood. A part of her job was to establish and advocate for women and girls who had been compelled into marriage or had been victims of home violence. This work made her a goal for the Taliban.

So Khadija and Mohammad moved to a relative’s home together with their two youthful sons, Mujib and the then 17-year-old Munib. The household stayed in hiding for 2 years.

“We didn’t sleep all the time, we were scared,” says Khadija. “When there was any noise, we were thinking how to run from home. For example, if the Taliban came from this side, how could we jump over the wall and run?

Then, in 2023, the family received news that they could leave Afghanistan with her two youngest sons. Despite having to leave her mother, and two adult kids — her oldest son and a daughter — behind, Khadija feels grateful to be in the United States with Mohammad, Mujib and Munib.

“We thank God a thousand times that we can start our life anew here,” she says.

However the continual stress of the previous few years has adopted them right here. “My husband and I stay awake until 1:30, 2 or 3 o’clock at night,” says Khadija, “because I still have that trauma from the Taliban’s regime in my brain.”

And 12-year-old Mujib has struggled essentially the most. He’s simply triggered by sudden noises, she says. “He gets pale, and his breathing gets hard. He gets panicked and runs to get out. One time there was a knock on the door, and he started crying non-stop.”

“A lot of the responses that you see in a young boy like that, those are expectable when you’ve been through the sort of frightening, traumatic events that he’s been through,” says Betancourt.

Khadija’s coaching {and professional} expertise working with victims of home and sexual violence have helped her perceive trauma reactions and establish them in her son.

However most refugee dad and mom won’t know or perceive comparable reactions of their kids, says Betancourt. They may not perceive that if their youngster is appearing out or having hassle following their dad and mom’ instructions, it might be associated to their previous trauma or present stress.

“And the child can feel quite alone in their experience,” she says, which will increase the chance of signs of psychological sicknesses like despair and anxiousness.

Stresses of beginning a brand new life

Like many newly resettled refugee youngsters, Mujib has struggled at college.

“He’d say to me, ‘Mother, I don’t want to go to this school because everyone is bullying me, and I don’t like this school. I don’t understand their language,’” says Khadija.

The language barrier is a giant supply of stress for Khadija and her husband, Mohammad, too. She desires to get licensed to work as a nurse right here, however she wants fluency in English first. She and Mohammad have been desperately searching for jobs, however most positions require some language proficiency.

“We have to learn the language because we have a hard time not knowing the language,” says Khadija. 

They’re taking driving classes, regardless that it might be a very long time earlier than they will afford to purchase a automobile. For now, they rely on different individuals within the Afghan neighborhood to provide them rides for every part from grocery purchasing to well being appointments to visits with others of their neighborhood.

These are frequent sources of stress amongst newly resettled refugees, says Siddiqui.

It may possibly take a very long time for refugees to discover a job even when they’re fluent in English, as Siddiqui was when she arrived.

“I applied for like three or four jobs at a time,” she remembers. Nothing got here by for some time.

“That takes a really big toll on your mental health,” explains Siddiqui. “I was so anxious. I was diagnosed with anxiety, because my mind was running 100 miles per hour just to get a job.”

It additionally took months for Siddiqui and her husband to seek out an condo they might hire as a result of they’d no credit score historical past; they lived with family whereas they seemed for a spot of their very own.

All this stress, she says, takes a toll on households.

“I can even tell you from my own experience, that the lack of getting a job, or unemployment, really strains your relationship,” says Siddiqui.

And strained relationships result in household conflicts. There can generally be an elevated danger for violence inside the dwelling, says Betancourt, as a result of dad and mom are additionally battling their previous traumas.

“We know this from military families, that when parents are exposed to significant violence in other settings, and they come back to rejoin their family environments,” says Betancourt, “we can see elevated problems with emotion regulation and sometimes more harsh disciplinary practices or harsh interactions between parents and children.”

She and her colleagues have additionally seen this within the refugee communities they’ve labored in.

These harsh interactions can damage a toddler’s emotional improvement and improve their danger of psychological well being issues in a while, she says.

However when dad and mom are doing nicely, they’re higher in a position to buffer their youngsters from the long run impacts of previous trauma and stresses.

Assist refugee youngsters by supporting their dad and mom

“We really want to think about addressing those harsh interactions between parents and children and providing parents with the skills to navigate better, to regulate their own emotions, to not take those sort of violent actions towards their children,” says Betancourt.

Siddiqui and her colleagues who work with particular person households, educate dad and mom constructive parenting abilities, in addition to methods to raised handle their very own stress by mindfulness methods. Training gratitude, searching for moments of pleasure and varied respiration methods are a number of the mindfulness instruments that folks study.

The peer educators additionally assist dad and mom navigate the on a regular basis issues of beginning afresh in a brand new and unfamiliar place.

Betancourt and her staff discovered that households who participated reported fewer household arguments and a discount in signs of despair and traumatic stress of their youngsters.

Khadija Rahmani tells me how Shabana Siddiqui has supported her, for instance, when she was feeling disheartened about studying English.  

“She motivated me, saying ‘It’s not hard. At least you are educated and you can read and write, and it will help you to learn English.’”

Siddiqui additionally helped Khadija discover a job at a FedEx packaging facility the place different Afghan ladies work, too. The place didn’t require data of English..

And the instruments of communication and emotional help that Khadija has realized from Siddiqui have helped her help Mujib.

She tries to spice up Mujib’s confidence so he feels higher about going to high school.

“To motivate him, I say ‘No one is better than you. No one is more handsome than you,’ ” Khadija says, smiling. Research present that this type of heat, supportive relationship with a mother or father is protecting for teenagers who’ve skilled trauma.

Mujib nonetheless struggles with homesickness. “The first thing that I miss most is our garden, the rest of my family, my land, my home and my dog,” says Mujib.

And he misses flying kites a lot he generally cries about it.

However Siddiqui herself has had a huge effect on Mujib, his mom says.

“Shabana sat with him, told him good stories, and talked about safety and security. She said ‘This place is safe and you don’t need to stress.’”

Siddiqui additionally inspired him to interact extra at college — a giant supply of hysteria for him.

Mujib says he appears ahead to visits from Siddiqui and talks to her rather a lot about his life.

“We talk about learning English,” says Mujib. “We talk about my school. We talk about everything.”

It’s serving to him begin to transfer previous the shadow of outdated traumas and towards constructing a hopeful future on this nation.

And in latest months his angle towards faculty has change into extra constructive. “I like learning English, I like playing soccer, I also like the gym,” Mujib says. “I like all sorts of things.”

Pictures by Raquel C. Zaldívar. Visuals enhancing by Ben de la Cruz. Enhancing by Diane Webber and Marc Silver.
Fauzia Tamanna contributed translations for this story and, together with Rahman Aziz, did voiceovers for the audio model.