With the arrival of the refugees from the war in Ukraine, we have found ourselves before people who are suffering situations of intense stress, which is a risk situation for their mental health.
However, the forecast that can be made from psychology and cross-cultural psychiatry is that the psychological difficulties of refugees usually begin, in most cases, after a while, not in the first moments, in which the refugee deploys all his energies, he is very busy organizing his basic survival: housing, work, having information about the relatives who have been left behind….. In this first stage, most refugees remain active, deploying all their capacities, have energy to fight. As is known, in the early stages of stress situations we have a great capacity to respond.
The relevant problems usually appear when stress becomes chronic. It is then when the enormous difficulties to get ahead begin to be perceived, loneliness begins to weigh heavily, defenselessness is felt in the face of the unfairness of the situation experienced, the obstacles of the host society in relation to opportunities are clearly perceived. , racism … Over time, moreover, the forces begin to falter
I have dealt with cases of refugees, in more than 30 years of experience, from different wars (Bosnia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine… to name a few) or cases of undocumented immigrants who find themselves with no way out, and I have observed that there is a point at which they remain blocked, confused, not knowing where to go, but at the same time, as if waiting for something to save them.
This situation has ever reminded me of the play “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Becket (1952) in which the Irish author masterfully describes the confusion, hopelessness, of people who see themselves as having no way out but who at the same time have confidence in something that helps them
Becket describes, not only in this play, but in his work in general, people in this type of situation. Thus, characters like Vladimir or Estragon, like many immigrants and refugees that we attend to, seem to live in a stopped time, in which they feel that nothing is happening, a time from which they cannot escape…..Obviously, these experiences are It also occurs in other situations of chronic stress in which people find themselves with no way out
I quote below some texts from “Waiting for Godot” that evoke these situations
Estragon: I’m tired. Let’s go
Vladimir: We can’t.
Estragon: Why?
Vladimir: We wait for Godot
Estragon: It’s true. Then what do we do?
Vladimir: There is nothing to do.
Estragon: I can’t take it anymore (Act 2)
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Estragon: We’ve come too early.
Vladimir: Always at dusk
Estragon: But night does not fall (Act 2)
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The end of the play arrives and Godot has not come
Estragon: What, we’re leaving?
Vladimir: Come on!
(don’t move)
End of the play “Waiting for Godot”
As the literary critic Ana González Salvador points out, Becket explores to the last consequences how to name the unnamable, using words that as soon as pronounced vanish like dust. Or as Domingo Ródenas points out, Becket’s characters wait to reiterate that there is nothing to say and that waiting is useless. becket dwrite characters who do not give up waiting, waiting for nothing, waiting for nothing. Characters who seem to ignore if they are still alive, characters who notice an enormous fatigue, a fatigue that is not from this world. This is the work of Samuel Becket, a lucid and generous Irishman, who donated all the money he received for the Nobel Prize, claiming that he already had his personal needs covered.
I have seen cases of immigrants and refugees that have reminded me of Becket’s texts. One of the cases that most impressed me was that of a Libyan refugee who arrived in Barcelona wounded, the victim of the explosion of a bomb planted on a street in Benghazi. Hamad describes his country as a destroyed place, dominated by mafias, to which he cannot return, but he finds himself unable to start a new life, even now that he has largely recovered from his injuries. Hamad is a kind, cultured man, who describes how he had a good life in his home country before the war, but he had to stay here for a long time, not knowing what to do with his life. Now it seems that for Hamad a moment in time has come when he has stopped. He feels here, far removed from his past and without a future.
Obviously, when describing these situations, we are not talking about dissociative symptoms, from a psychopathological perspective, but rather states of very deep personal crisis related to the intense chronic stressors they suffer. We are referring to pictures that go far beyond, in my opinion, the narrow frameworks of psychopathology, to psychological states along the lines of what Foucault called “integral human phenomena”.
Psychological help in these cases is not easy. There is consensus on the usefulness of narrative-type techniques along the lines of Epston and White’s approaches, supporting that these people can reinterpret, restructure their own history. In short, it would be about helping these people find a narrative, a coherent story that gives meaning to their lives, after so many vicissitudes and suffering.