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Focus on Partners 
Interfaith Ministries
for Greater Houston: When the Mohammed family (not their real name) arrived in Houston in January, they seemed to be looking forward to their new life in the United States and began the resettlement process with few problems. Their caseworker thought the family was nice, but the wife seemed very shy and quiet. The Mohammeds’ 14-year-old son learned English and made friends quickly at the local high school. When it came time to look for employment, Mrs. Mohammed seemed disinterested and unmotivated. After refusing several jobs with little reason, her caseworker suggested she speak to the psychologist at Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston (IMGH). During her sessions it became clear that Mrs. Mohammed continued to feel loss, not only from her experience leaving her country but also here in the United States, as her son and husband quickly adapted to their new life. Feeling lost and sad, she felt depressed and unable to be herself. Imagine being uprooted from your home, witnessing neighbors and loved ones tortured or killed, and having to flee your country because you are being persecuted. Although you are one of the fortunate few who are admitted to the United States for resettlement as a refugee, everything may not be just right. For many refugees fleeing terror in their homelands, arriving here is not the end of the story. Hidden wounds remain and need to be addressed by mental health professionals before resettlement can be fully successful.
To understand the need for a counseling component in resettlement services, think in terms of threat and loss. Many refugees have been threatened, imprisoned or tortured or have witnessed others mistreated or killed. They have experienced the loss of home, community and country. They have lost their jobs, professional identities or other societal roles, family, friends, social contacts and, in many cases, their health. These losses often leave deep wounds in their identity, self-esteem and sense of security. If you understand threat as being the root of anxiety and loss as the root of depression, then you can see why there is an increased rate of anxiety and depressive disorders found among refugees. And although resettlement in U.S. communities rescues refugees from the dire and immediate threats they fled in their homelands, it by no means marks the end of stressful circumstances. Adapting to a new culture and undergoing lifestyle changes is difficult for anyone, but it is especially difficult for those with limited financial resources and without the ability to speak English. The Cross-Cultural Counseling Program is involved in counseling, evaluation, research and training. Referrals come from case managers, attorneys and other resettlement agencies. Common therapy issues include domestic abuse, depression, anxiety, psychotic disorders and adjustment disorders. Often it is problems in daily living that bring an individual to counseling rather than a specific mental health issue such as posttraumatic stress disorder or major depression as basic needs usually take precedence over emotional needs. The program provides psychological evaluations for asylum seekers as well as consultation and education both to IMGH staff members and those of other resettlement agencies. Involvement in research on refugee issues includes a current collaboration with researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center to develop a screening tool to identify those most at risk for mental health problems. This is a two-year project funded by a grant from the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health. Also, we provide a supervised training site for psychology residents from the University of Texas Medical School. Refugees are resilient and resourceful individuals.
We do not assume that they must have psychological problems by virtue
of their experiences, nor do we pathologize the process of coping
with resettlement issues. We do, however, want to be available to
address psychological issues that have the potential to interfere
with the successful resettlement. Pennsylvania Immigration
Resource Center: A 15-year-old native of Eritrea faces an uphill battle to gain asylum in the United States. Hariam (not her real name) spent six months in a youth shelter in Pennsylvania’s Berks County used by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) for unaccompanied children. She found help from the York-based Pennsylvania Immigration Resource Center, which is supported by an LIRS Asylum and Immigration Grant. Its acronym, PIRC, is pronounced like the word “perk.” The center’s goals, says Executive Director Metty Vithayathil, are to provide “timely, effective and compassionate legal services” for all unrepresented asylum seekers and immigrants detained by the INS in 11 facilities in the state and to advocate on their behalf. At any given time the detainees now number approximately 1,800. Described as an intelligent and friendly child who learned English quickly and was well liked by her teachers and the other children at the shelter, Hariam was 8 when her family left Eritrea for Ethiopia because her father feared persecution for his political activities. After a border war had started between Eritrea and Ethiopia in 1998, Ethiopian authorities took away Hariam’s family one day. She was playing at a friend’s house at the time and thereby escaped arrest. She does not know her family’s fate. The friend’s family, also Eritreans, took in Hariam. They eventually became refugees in Kenya. Last September the head of the family told Hariam he was taking her to a place where she would be safe. At Kennedy Airport he disappeared. Hariam ended up in the Berks County shelter. PIRC worked with pro bono attorneys on her asylum case and pushed to have her released to the care of a paternal aunt in Indianapolis. On the first try the immigration court denied her asylum. PIRC is filing an appeal. Her release came in March. Now with her aunt, she no longer fears for her life nor feels unwanted. PIRC staff members face an ever-growing clientele. The majority of detainees at New York City’s Varick Street detention facility, which closed in September 2001, were moved to Pennsylvania prisons, and New York continues to send detainees to the state. Beside the detention centers run by the INS directly, the largest prison for detainees in the country is now the York County Prison holding up to 900. PIRC developed in 1996 out of the legal work of volunteers who were seeking to gain the release of a group of asylum seekers from China detained three years earlier in York County Prison. The Chinese were on the ship Golden Venture that ran aground on the Rockaway Peninsula in the New York borough of Queens. PIRC’s initial work with asylum seekers quickly expanded to detained indigent immigrants in what has been called an “immigration netherworld.” “The most critical need of INS detainees in Pennsylvania is access—access to legal assistance, social services and even a sympathetic ear,” says Metty. Through a mix of group workshops in the prisons, individual consultations and referrals, PIRC tries hard to help every unrepresented detainee at the facilities served. A native of St. Louis whose parents were immigrants from India, Metty came to PIRC in August 2000 directly from getting a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School at Philadelphia. For the first year she was the only staff member. In August 2001 Chris Einolf, who is accredited by the Board of Immigration Appeals, joined her after five years of doing asylum work for the LIRS affiliate Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area. Since then two others have joined the staff: Cathy Haines, a paralegal; and Lorna Kralik, also an attorney. Additional help comes regularly from law school interns. One intern has just developed the website www.pirclaw.org. “We’ve definitely grown, but not as much as the need,” says Metty, who meets monthly with PIRC’s eight-member board of directors. The directors focus on fund-raising. The outreach of the center is impressive, as the following show:
PIRC is also a member of the Detention Watch Network
and the Forgotten Refugees Campaign, both coordinated by LIRS, and
works closely with International Friendship House, a neighbor in
York. This residence for released detainees is sponsored by the
Golden Vision Foundation. It also began in response to the plight
of the Golden Venture refugees.
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IMGH’s
Cross-Cultural Counseling Program was established a decade ago out
of frustration over the lack of adequate mental health resources
for newly arrived refugees. There were no service providers who
could offer culturally and linguistically appropriate mental health
services to newly arrived refugees. In addition refugees were unwilling
to seek out traditional mental health providers because of cultural
differences or preconceived notions. Thus with a grant from the
United Way of the Texas Gulf Coast and the help of local congregations
and foundations, IMGH was able to establish a program to effectively
deal with the mental health needs of refugees and further develop
a more comprehensive approach to refugee resettlement.
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