The Delegation of the Government of Melilla has hosted the presentation of the project in Spain of the project ‘Migration in Mind’ of Doctors of the World, initiative that aims to establish a sustainable framework of relational services with mental health and psychosocial support for migrants.
In the presentation of the project, which has the participation of Doctors of the World of Slovakia, Belgium, Croatia, whose representatives were present at the meeting this morning at the headquarters of the Delegation of the City Government to exchange experiences and to continue advancing in the project they are developing.
The Head of the Coordination Unit against Violence against Women of the Government Delegation in Melilla, Laura Segura Sarompas, explained that Médecins du Monde established the proposal that the gender perspective could be raised and, since the city works, in collaboration with the different organizations and entities with migrants and, specifically, with women, “we could exchange experiences and explain how all this work is carried out, in collaboration with the different organizations with a view to assisting migrants.”
“We are clear that, since there is a feminization in the concept of migration, it is essential to have this look and clearly understand that migrants, because of their life experience, are exposed to quite difficult, complicated situations that can directly affect their mental health, but obviously to women even more,” he said.
Thus, Segura has pointed out that they are “exposed to discrimination, stereotypes, cultural and social pressures and, above all, exposed to violence, both at the origin, which may even be the reason for this migratory movement, as well as in the journey and in the destination itself”.
The Head of the Unit has assured that “we have always tried to have this look when we work on violence and we have also tried to raise social awareness about the importance of opening the concept of violence beyond the violence suffered by women because they are women, within what we understand as the law of gender violence”, and this has covered issues such as female genital mutilation, sexual exploitation, trafficking in women and girls for the purpose of sexual exploitation, forced marriages… “which are many of these violence that, in addition, have a very great impact on the mental health of women and, above all, in this project they try to cover everything that has to do with health”.
Right to mental health
The technical reference of Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Doctors of the World Spain, Eva Gallego, for her part, explained that the name of the project -the migration in mind- refers to two rights: “The right to migrate, which is a universal right, and the right to health and mental health, because without mental health we cannot talk about health.”
Thus, he recalled that Doctors of the World Spain has been working with vulnerable groups for many years, including migrants and also in the field of mental health and, in recent years, “we have tried a little to harmonize the ways of intervening, see what good practices help us to facilitate the process of integration of these people and access to mental health resources.”
As he said, a couple of years ago they were contacted by the partners of Doctors of the World Belgium, for a European call “that precisely what it intends is to try to do that exchange and see what practices are interesting, how we can improve mental health care and psychosocial support with the most vulnerable displaced or migrated population, applicants for international protection, people who are currently undocumented, survivors of human trafficking networks….”.
According to Gallego, this project started in September, in Zagreb, and has study trips “to learn about different migratory contexts and see what is being done to facilitate access to mental health resources for people migrated in different contexts to try to see what the best practices are and how we can adapt them to the contexts”.
Thus, in the case of Spain “we decided that the project should be executed in Melilla because we believe that it is a key place as migratory transit and also as a space for intercultural coexistence due to its particularity of context”.
In his statement to the media, he made it clear that human rights organizations “do not intend to replace the public health system but to strengthen it, and sometimes intercultural competence in health resources is necessary.”
In fact, he has advanced that “we are going to provide training, materials, meetings… with health and mental health professionals to have a slightly more intercultural approach, which takes into account the worldview of health from different cultures of the people with whom we live in different contexts”.
Support for migrant women
The coordinator of Doctors of the World Melilla, Silvia Madejón, recalled that her organization has made a bet since 2021 “incorporating the figure of the psychologist within the project, because we believed that it was a need within the city to cover part of that mental health”.
Thus, he explained that “we started working with support groups for migrant women, residents of the city, which have already worked since then”. In this sense, she has valued this support for the situations that are experienced within migration, together with the fact of being a woman and the different violence that they encounter, “it gives them strength to be able to face all this, since, when you are not well psychologically, you have a lot more difficulties to be able to face what you do”.
What is more, he has reported that, during these months, they have been working at the CETI with people of Latin origin, who were demanding the issue of mental health, and everything related to migratory flight has been worked with them. “Many times those situations that they bring by themselves, the belief system, how it integrates and, for example, in the case of other types of languages, being able to express emotions is very difficult if you do not do it in your mother tongue, so all these types of situations, we have to add them within that complicated process that you live and give them tools,” he said.
However, he pointed out that the intervention that is done “is very different with people in transit compared to people living in Melilla, because people in transit need something much faster to then be able to continue in that process. However, the people who live here, there is much more time and much more space to be able to intervene with them.”