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In the streets of Rome, Paris or Barcelona, one sometimes crosses these silent silhouettes with empty eyes, these men or women who seem absent in the world, walled in their suffering. Behind these faces marked by fatigue often hide tragic stories: desert crossings, captivity in Libya, makeshift boats, shipwrecks and bereavements.
These immigrants, who have gone looking for a better life, carry invisible wounds. Mental injuries that Europe still struggles to recognize and treat.
An open-air human drama
Every year, tens of thousands of migrants leave West Africa or the Horn of Africa, cross the Sahara, cross the Libyan or Tunisian non-law zones, before facing the Mediterranean or the Atlantic on makeshift boats.
According to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Mediterranean remains the most deadly migration route in the world, with more 25,000 dead and missing since 2014.
But the survivors, too, pay a terrible price. They carry in their memory the images of fallen companions at sea, torture in camps, Sexual violence and humiliation experienced during their journey. These trials leave deep scars, often indelible.
The crossing of the desert and the Libyan underworld
Before reaching the coast, the majority of these migrants crossed Sahara, this immense desert separating the lands of sub-Saharan Africa from the Maghreb. The journey takes place in inhumane conditions: extreme heat, lack of water, famines, militia attacks, desert abandonment.
Those who manage to cross this natural barrier face another hell: Libya.
This country, torn apart by war and political fragmentation, has become the scene of a real human trafficking market. Thousands of migrants are there captured, sold, imprisoned or exploited as slaves. The evidence gathered by Médecins sans frontières, Amnesty International or the UN refers to torture, rape, electrocution, food deprivation, and Protracted detention in abominable conditions.
This Libyan step, more than any other, is a central trauma. Many migrants arrive in Europe with a Post-traumatic stress disordersevere anxiety disorders, or major depressive episodes.
The pirogues of the Atlantic: the last chance trip
Those who embark on the canoes to the Canary Islands or the Spanish coasts face another form of death. On these precarious boats, thirst, cold, fear and promiscuity combine with omnipresent death.
Some see their friends die by their side, others witness horror scenes where the bodies are thrown to the sea to lighten the boat.
These extreme experiences are a lasting sign of psychism: recurrent nightmares, panic attacks, dissociations, hallucinations, mutism or hypervigilance.
The arrival on European soil does not end the nightmare. For many, this is the start of a new wandering, that of rejection, loneliness and exclusion.
Europe, disenchanted host land
The countries of arrival: Italy, Spain, Greece, France, are not always prepared to receive these survivors with dignity.
The administrative bureaucracy, the slow pace of asylum procedures, the saturation of reception centres and the lack of psychological accompaniment are driving many migrants into a Post-traumatic wandering.
In the streets of Paris, Brussels or Milan, you can see them speaking alone, screaming in a vacuum, sleeping under bridges, or wandering without a goal.
They are not just homeless people: they are survivors of an invisible war, the one conducted against themselves and against the memory of the journey.
Psychiatry of uprooting
Clinical studies in Europe confirm this distress: 30% of migrants and refugees have severe depressive disorders and one third suffers from chronic post-traumatic stress.
To these disorders add short psychotic symptoms, dissociative episodes, somatic pain without organic cause, persistent insomnia, and sometimes Suicidal impulses.
Doctors and psychologists working in reception centres speak of a Total uprooting syndrome : breakdown of family ties, loss of status, lack of cultural landmarks, and disappointment at the European myth.
The majority of them do not receive any psychiatric follow-up due to lack of interpreters, specialized facilities or medical coverage.
Obstacles to care
Several factors aggravate therapeutic exclusion:
- Administrative status As long as asylum is not processed, access to care is limited.
- The language barrier disorders are often misunderstood or misdiagnosed.
- Housing insecurity : how to rebuild when sleeping outside or in a gym?
- Stigma mental disorders remain taboo, especially among African men.
- Lack of coordination : medical, social and associative devices often act without synergy.
WHO and the European Union have been advocating for several years a so-called MHPSS (Mental Health and Psychosocial Support), integrating psychological care, social support and economic reintegration. But on the ground, this approach is still too marginal.
The urgency of a comprehensive response
It is not just a public health problem: it is a human, moral and political issues.
Traumatized migrants need comprehensive support, which is not limited to psychiatric counselling, but takes into account their life path, their basic needs and their dignity regained.
An effective action plan should include:
- Early detection troubles upon arrival, in reception centres.
- Cultural interpreters and mediators to accompany clinical interviews.
- Short psychotherapy adapted: TCC (Behavioural and Cognitive Therapy), EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), narrative therapy.
- Stable access to housing and social rights, essential stabilization factor.
- Training mhGAP (Mental Health Gap Action Programme) for non-specialised professionals.
- Community programmes involving former peer-assisted migrants.
Experience shows that successful social and economic integration acts as a powerful antidepressant. Employment, stability and recognition are often more therapeutic than isolated drug treatment.
Towards recognition of invisible injuries
The trauma of migrants is not always visible. They do not bear visible scars, but live with deep internal wounds: guilt for surviving, shame, despair, loss of sense.
Europe must understand that these men and women are not just asylum seekers or figures in a statistic: they are survivors of an inhumane crossingwho seek to find their humanity.
There is an urgent need for a policy of therapeutic reception where mental health is recognized as a fundamental right in the same way as food or housing.
Without this, the streets of the great capitals will continue to fill with these lost eyes, silent witnesses to a tragedy that our societies still refuse to see.
Care for rebuilding, welcoming, not betraying our values
Migration to Europe is not simply an economic or demographic flow: it is above all a human and psychological tragedy a silent magnitude.
These men and women crossed the deserts, confronted the militias, challenged the sea, and survived inhuman conditions that few Europeans can imagine. They have lost everything except life; and sometimes even the taste of living.
But when they arrive, away from a refuge, it's often rejection they meet.
In a Europe won by fear and uncertainty, the rise of extreme right movements and the resurgence of speeches xenophobic transform exile into a convenient scapegoat.
Foreigner is no longer perceived as a person in distress, but as a threat to national identity, a figure in migration statistics, an anonymous face that is feared or unknown.
Yet, refusing to see the suffering of these survivors is to deny our own humanity.
Europe, which is the cradle of human rights, cannot turn away the eyes of those who, fleeing poverty and war, come knocking on its doors.
Treating these traumas, providing a dignified reception and psychological support is not only a moral duty: it is a way of preserving humanistic values that founded our societies.
For at the bottom, the greatness of a civilization is not measured by the wealth of its nations, but by the It gives kindness to those who no longer have anything..
If Europe gives way to fear, it will cease to be a refuge to become a mirror of its own contradictions.
Treating these shipwrecked people with exile is also treating the injured soul of Europe She herself.
