News

Statement on Home Office putting vulnerable asylum seekers at increased suicide risk in detention.

19 April 2021

In response to Royal College of Psychiatrists calls on ministers to stop placing mentally unwell people in removal centres, Robina Qureshi, Director of refugee and migrant homelessness charity, Positive Action in Housing, which supports hundreds of asylum seekers each year, said:

“We agree with the Royal College of psychiatrists that the Home Office should not detain those with mental health problems. But is the Home Office even risk assessing mental health of asylum seekers?

“Our concern is that the Home Office is not screening or risk assessing people who seek asylum in this country for mental health.

“One example is Adnan Walid Elbi, a Syrian refugee who was tortured during his asylum journey. He was known to the Home Office to be suicidal yet was placed in Dungavel Detention Centre in 2019. In March 2020, at the height of the pandemic, he was then crowded with 90 other people into a hotel with little privacy, movement, or social distancing. He gave a statement to the Home Office saying he was suicidal and pleading for help, nothing was done and only a matter of days later was found dead in his hotel room at the Mclays hotel in Glasgow. And we have called for a public inquiry into his death and the events that occurred at the Park Inn Hotel in Glasgow where 6 people were stabbed and one person was killed, all are related to mental health of asylum seekers.

“So how is the Home Office going to identify those who have a mental health condition and need added support?

“Another point to remember is that often people arrive here mentally well, but the months or years of asylum delay and the constant disbelief that they encounter can often lead to severe depression, self harm and suicidal thoughts.”

See statement below by a man seeking asylum with his wife in Glasgow:

“A small room with a bed… Windows that do not open fully. Poor quality food being dispersed on a time table over which we had no choice… Only two washing machines for 100 people. Leaking roofs… Being left penniless in a country where we are not even allowed to work. I didn’t know for how long we would be tangled in that hostel room. On our first day in the hostel, the MEARS officer told that we would be there for an indefinite time. Is it possible for a human-being to get his head around “no certainty”? The day becomes the month becomes the year becomes the decade… Our mental faculties started to break down. Because the system, maybe unintentionally, was designed to break people as vulnerable as us. Our sense of self and identity started to fragment. Even though we stayed strong, we declined. We went from fit and capable to talking about suicide ideation. When your life is the only thing that you have choice over in the end, you’d probably contemplate it, too. Locking a traumatized person up in a hostel for an indefinite time… It just cuts through everybody’s emotional and psychological state. It just diminishes…”