(Brussels, 7 October 2011) –
It was throughout her time spent living in foreign
countries such as Australia, Brazil, England and
Spain that Sr. Maria José Rebelo of the Portuguese
Holy Spirit Missionaries came to realise and
empathise with the plight of migrants and refugees.
After six and a half years in Australia where she
completed her studies in clinical psychology -
specialising in transcultural mental health - Sr.
Rebelo felt the pull of her native Portugal, where
she returned to begin working as a volunteer for JRS.
The pressing need for the provision of mental health
care for refugees became apparent to JRS Portugal at
this time, so from February 2007, they started their
mental health program. What began as a part-time
service – ‘‘one or two days a week’’ – quickly
evolved into a full-time program where
Sr. Rebelo started ‘‘working in psychological
support as a full time worker’’ by July of that
year.
Today, JRS Portugal’s mental health department
consists of two full-time workers who last year
provided psychotherapy and counselling to 108
migrants.
The culture shock of being in a foreign country,
prohibited from employment due to lack of proper
immigration status can have a detrimental effect on
migrants’ mental health. ‘‘Very often, people are
struggling with unemployment, with social problems,
being unable to meet their basic human needs such as
food, shelter, rent. Their illegal status is very
often a source of their anxiety”.
Crisis intervention is one of the main ways JRS
Portugal helps migrants with psychological
difficulties. According to Sr. Rebelo, ‘‘People
often feel a lot of guilt when they cannot send
money to their children or elderly parents. They
suffer because they are unable to visit them due to
their irregular status. So, there are a lot of
feelings of mistrust and low self-esteem. They stop
believing in themselves’’.
Most of the people the JRS mental health team deals
with come for short term sessions where emotions
such as guilt and sadness, and grief about recent
loss are very common. Generally, the people in this
category only require a few sessions. One third of
Sister Rebelo’s clients, however, require between 10
to 20 sessions. A small amount of other cases who
suffer from some predisposition to some mental
health problems are referred to psychiatry or a
general practitioner for long-term treatments.
Sr. Rebelo does not usually have any problems
getting her clients to open up about their problems.
She puts this down to friendly and open atmosphere
ubiquitous in JRS Portugal, but also due to the
proximity of each of the different JRS departments.
‘‘We
work in the same vicinity as the other areas of
support... if a person goes to the social support
office and is in a very bad condition emotionally,
my colleague might call me to meet the person which
causes a relationship to be built. If the person
also has a trusting relationship with one of my
colleagues, they will find it easier to trust me.
If, for example, a colleague asked the client to go
to the middle of Lisbon for mental health support, I
don’t think the person would go. They trust us and
feel cared for here’’.While the mental health
department has made huge strides since 2007, a lack
of space and financial support has inhibited its
further expansion. Sr. Rebelo would also like the
department to be able to provide psychiatric support
but ‘‘we are dependent on volunteers”. If JRS could
find a psychiatrist that would volunteer to help
them, they could at least start going into this
direction.
Such short term road blocks, however, cannot
frustrate the good work JRS Portugal is doing. As
Sr. Rebelo puts it, ‘‘we have good experience on the
ground’’ and a lot of data gathered for ‘‘conducting
studies’’. This will eventually ‘‘give us more
capacity for speaking on behalf of the migrants and
their mental health needs.’’
