Six news organizations from around the country joined together as the Reporting on Health Collaborative to highlight the interplay between immigration status and health. Many immigrants feel isolated and alone in America – suffering that can turn toxic over time. This is one of those stories:
Between 2008 and 2013, the office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Atlanta - which also covers North and South Carolina - deported 114,590 people and had the seventh highest number of expulsions among jurisdictions during those years. Experts say that most of those who were deported have children.
This separation not only leaves the mother and children who are left alone with an emotional burden, but also with the loss of financial support, the risk of losing their home and the lack of resources to meet basic needs.
“The experience of the deportation of a loved one commonly results in clinical depression,” explained Rocío Woody, founder of The Road to Recovery, a clinic that has offered psychological services to many immigrants since 1995. Woody is an experienced psychotherapist with Peruvian roots whose clients include families affected by deportation.
According to Woody, people who face this experience suffer feelings of hopelessness, powerlessness, rage, frustration, and the loss of freedom and their right to choose.
“I have seen a lot of depression, feelings of pessimism. Another thing that I have seen is a depressed anxiety, in which the person sometimes does not know what to do with herself, where she gets angry very quickly, becomes very irritated, and then the children begin to have an effect on her,” commented psychotherapist Alonso Romero.
http://www.reportingonhealth.org/living-shadows-immigration-system-breaks-hearts
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