Lilas Alloulou & Maya Chami — Research Creation

Maya Chami & Lilas Alloulou

A Muddy Road

2015 has seen the largest migration crisis since the Second World War. In both times, millions of people, unimaginable numbers, had - and still have - to leave their homes and lives behind, looking for a newstart in the hardest ways. Our project revolves around memories, dreams, and the psychological effects and mental health issues that come with the loss and the having to leave in times of war and crisis. In both migration mass movements, the recent one and the one at the end of the Second World War, many forcibly displaced were not able to take anything with them. They left behind their loved ones, their childhood memories, and almost all of their belongings. If they were lucky, they managed to bring a few personal items, items that sometimes had already accompanied them during wartime in their home country and then were kept on the long journey.

Those items have the power to cause a traumatic flashback, but they can also have healing effects, and only the owner can feel this power. All other people can take a look at the statistics. They show that forcibly displaced have often experienced traumatic events (TEs), which defines them as a high-risk group for mental disorders. Several studies have investigated the mental health problems of Syrian refugees in recent years. Prevalence rates range from 20.5 to 35.7% for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), from 20 to 43.9% for depression, and from 19.3 to 31.8% for anxiety. All these conditions can lead to dysfunctional behavior and affect their ability to cope with new environments. Other studies have shown the effects of traumatic experiences of the Second World War on Germans who lived through them. They concluded that 2.3 percent of all Germans, and 1.8 million people still today, were and are affected by some sort of serious trauma. They were surprised by the relatively high incidence of PTSD among older people, who at the time often were misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all.