Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-q6k6v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-09T20:55:17.606Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - “Everything Here Is Temporary”

Psychological Distress and Suffering among Iraqi Refugees in Egypt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2014

By
Nadia El-Shaarawi
Edited by
Devon E. Hinton  and
Alexander L. Hinton
Nadia El-Shaarawi
Affiliation:
Duke University
Devon E. Hinton
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Alexander L. Hinton
Affiliation:
Rutgers University, New Jersey
Get access

Summary

Psychological problems ... begin from Iraq and continue where they (refugees) live now or where they settled in Egypt. It is concern about the war itself, second about the life, and the shortage of life facilities. Also about the unclear future; the future is an important thing to the person, to the human being. If the future is not clear, some problems will begin.

(Laith, NGO physician, Cairo, 2007)

Living in Egypt has an effect on my health. Of course. Every day I wake up, I feel that I am older by ten years.... Every day, ten years. Because of the sadness and because I am scared. Maybe one day the Egyptian government will say that we cannot accept Iraqis and will make us go back. I cannot go back. I will kill myself before I go back. The media is saying that things are better in Iraq, but they are lying. Our families there, they tell us it is as bad.... So I am afraid of going back to Iraq, and I am afraid of staying here in Egypt. So I have no choices. We came here as a station. It is a temporary place. I can’t be excited for anything. I can’t be excited for tomorrow. If I want to buy anything I say no, maybe the money can help in another place. The future is unknown and we cannot decide anything. We are waiting for an unknown future. So we are very sad here. I can’t stay more in Egypt. I hate myself.

(May, Iraqi refugee woman, Cairo, 2008)
Type
Chapter
Information
Genocide and Mass Violence
Memory, Symptom, and Recovery
 , pp. 195 - 211
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Al-Mohammad, H. (2012). A kidnapping in Basra: The struggles and precariousness of life in postinvasion Iraq. Cultural Anthropology, 27, 597–614.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, 4th ed., text rev. Washington, DC:American Psychiatric Association.Google Scholar
Becker, G., Beyene, Y., & Ken, P. (2000a). Memory, trauma, and embodied distress: The management of disruption in the stories of Cambodians in exile. Ethos, 28, 320–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, G.,Beyene, Y.Ken, P., (2000b). Health, welfare reform, and narratives of uncertainty among Cambodian refugees. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 24, 139–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beiser, M. (1999). Strangers at the gate: The “boat people’s” first ten years in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beiser, M., & Hou, F. (2001). Language acquisition, unemployment and depressive disorder among Southeast Asian refugees: A 10-year study. Social Science & Medicine, 53, 1321–34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Boehnlein, J. K., Kinzie, J. D., Sekiya, U., Riley, C., Pou, K., & Rosborough, B. (2004). A ten-year treatment outcome study of traumatized Cambodian refugees. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 192, 658–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Coker, E. M. (2004). “Traveling pains”: Embodied metaphors of suffering among Southern Sudanese refugees in Cairo. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 28, 15–39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Das, V., Kleinman, A., Lock, M., Ramphele, M., & Reynolds, P. (2001). Remaking a world: Violence, social suffering, and recovery, 1st ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Desjarlais, R., Eisenberg, L., Good, B., & Kleinman, A. (1996). World mental health: Problems and priorities in low-income countries. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Devi, S. (2007). Meeting the health needs of Iraqi refugees in Jordan. Lancet, 370, 1815–16.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fargues, P., El-Masry, S., Sadek, S., & Shaban, A. (2008). Iraqis in Egypt: A statistical survey in 2008. Cairo: Center for Migration and Refugee Studies, The American University in Cairo. Retrieved from Google Scholar
Gibney, M. J. (2004). The ethics and politics of asylum: Liberal democracy and the response to refugees. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gross, C. S. (2004). Struggling with imaginaries of trauma and trust: The refugee experience in Switzerland. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 28, 151–67.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Haas, B. M. (2012). Suffering and the struggle for recognition: Lived experiences of the U.S. political asylum process. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, San Diego.Google Scholar
Hatton, T. J. (2009). The rise and fall of asylum: What happened and why?The Economic Journal, 119, F183–F213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henry, D. (2006). Violence and the body: Somatic expressions of trauma and vulnerability during war. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 20, 379–98.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hinton, D., Hinton, S., Um, K., Chea, A., & Sak, S. (2002). The Khmer “weak heart” syndrome: Fear of death from palpitations. Transcultural Psychiatry, 39, 323–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hinton, D. E., Nickerson, A., & Bryant, R. A. (2011). Worry, worry attacks, and PTSD among Cambodian refugees: A path analysis investigation. Social Science & Medicine, 72, 1817–25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hinton, D. E, Pich, V., Marques, L., Nickerson, A., & Pollack, M. H. (2010). Khyâl attacks: A key idiom of distress among traumatized Cambodian refugees. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 34, 244–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingleby, D. (2005). Forced migration and mental health: Rethinking the care of refugees and displaced persons. New York: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, E. C. (2009). Neomodern insecurity in Haiti and the politics of asylum. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 33, 153–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jenkins, J. H. (1991). The state construction of affect: Political ethos and mental health among Salvadoran refugees. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 15, 139–65.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jenkins, J. H. (1996). The impress of extremity: Women’s experience of trauma and political violence. In Brettell, C. & Sargent, C. (Eds.), Gender and health, an international perspective (pp. 278–91). New York: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Kinzie, J. D. (2007). PTSD among traumatized refugees. In L. J. Kirmayer, R. Lemelson, & Barad, M. (Eds.), Understanding trauma: Integrating biological, clinical, and cultural perspectives (pp. 194–206). New York: Cambridge University PressCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirmayer, L. J., Narasiah, L., Munoz, M., Rashid, M., Ryder, A. G., Guzder, J., Hassan, G., et al. (2011). Common mental health problems in immigrants and refugees: General approach in primary care. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 183, E959–E967.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Laban, C. J., Komproe, I. H., Gernaat, H. B., & de Jong, J. T. V. (2008). The impact of a long asylum procedure on quality of life, disability and physical health in Iraqi asylum seekers in the Netherlands. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 43, 507–15.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nordstrom, C. (1998). Terror warfare and the medicine of peace. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 12, 103–21.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ong, A. (2003). Buddha is hiding: Refugees, citizenship, the New America. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Sadek, S. (2010). Iraqi “temporary guests” in neighbouring countries. In Laipsan, E. & Pandya, A. (Eds.), On the move: Migration challenges in the Indian Ocean littoral. Washington, DC:Henry L. Stimson Center.Google Scholar
Sadek, S. (2011). Safe haven or limbo? Iraqi refugees in Egypt. International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies, 5, 185–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silove, D., Sinnerbrink, I., Field, A., Manicavasagar, V., & Steel, Z. (1997). Anxiety, depression and PTSD in asylum-seekers: Associations with pre-migration trauma and post-migration stressors. British Journal of Psychiatry, 170, 351–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steel, Z., Momartin, S., Silove, D., Coello, M., Aroche, J., & Tay, K. W. (2011). Two year psychosocial and mental health outcomes for refugees subjected to restrictive or supportive immigration policies. Social Science & Medicine, 72, 1149–56.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Steel, Z., Silove, D., Brooks, R., Momartin, S., Alzuhairi, B., & Susljik, I. (2006). Impact of immigration detention and temporary protection on the mental health of refugees. British Journal of Psychiatry, 188, 58–64.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
UNHCR. (2010). Note on the continued applicability of the April 2009 UNHCR Eligibility Guidelines for Assessing the International Protection Needs of Iraqi Asylum-Seekers. Geneva: UNHCR.Google Scholar
UNHCR. (2013). UNHCR global resettlement statistical report 2012. Geneva: UNHCR, Resettlement Service.Google Scholar
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). (2013). Iraqi refugee processing fact sheet. Washington, DC:USCIS.Google Scholar
Westermeyer, J., Neider, J., & Vang, T. F. (1984). Acculturation and mental health: A study of Hmong refugees at 1.5 and 3.5 years postmigration. Social Science & Medicine, 18, 87–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×