The Issue

The recent influx of migrant families coming to Chicago has widely affected the city and schools. Our class has been staying up to date with recent information regarding migrants and how the city and CPS have been handling the situation. Additionally we have been extensively researching the mental wellbeing of these migrants and the trauma that they have endured through recent news articles and research studies.

 

A Chicago Sun Times article highlighted the mental health challenges that asylum seekers could face. The article touched upon a woman named Mary Schaaf, a volunteer who has been helping the newly arrived immigrants through Refugee Community Connection. Schaaf shared that some of the migrants have cried and expressed feeling a sense of guilt for leaving behind relatives or children in their native countries. The article also referred to the American Psychiatric Association that noted refugees have a 15% to 30% chance of developing post-traumatic stress disorder. 

 

Dr. Suzan Song, the director of global child and family mental health at Boston Children’s Hospital indicated that some won’t develop PTSD but may suffer because of the uncertainty of their situation, the demoralization of having to leave their country or experience grief from afar while for others, the stressors from daily life in a new environment can be traumatic.

 

A DW article released this year that focused on children refugees' mental health touched upon the unseen scars of trauma. Jon-Hakon Schultz, senior researcher at the Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies, told DW that refugee children are particularly vulnerable "Because they lack cognitive functioning to understand what's going on. And it's so easy for children to think that this is much more dangerous than it really is." The article also had research from Lynn Jones, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and relief worker who found that, "A growing amount of research shows that the persistence and accumulation of adverse experiences such as child maltreatment, neglect and poverty in a child's life have profound effects on both physical and mental health throughout the life course."

 

To further our extensive research we sought out a meeting with a principal of a CPS elementary school and a mother of a student within the school. This allowed us to gain insight on how children are currently being supported in addition to learning first hand what else CPS can do to tend to the mental health needs of these children. Their invaluable insight has guided us to formulate recommendations for CPS that we believe will best help the migrant families.