Emigration Centers Are Harming Children Psychologically

Reports are still showing that people are worried about children facing psychological harm in emigration detention centers. However, people are not just worried about the psychological harm. They are also worried about violence and physical health problems as well.

Medical Justice, which sends doctors to these emigration centers, said that more than half of the kids in the 141 cases it looked into since April of 2004, suffered some kind of psychological harm from being in these emigration centers. Some of the symptoms they saw included bed wetting, heightened anxiety, food refusal and loss of bowel control.

Six of the cases expressed suicidal ideas, and three girls tried to end their lives. Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, went on to describe the detention of kids as a moral outrage. The government plans to end kid detention as soon as possible.

The author of the charity's State Sponsored Cruelty report, Jon Burnett, said that the dossier of evidence that they are publishing brings to light the harm that comes from detaining kids. By locking up these kids, they are caused harm, suffering and anguish. Children have attempted to end their own lives and have been left seriously physically and psychologically damaged.

The Medical Justice report also showed that 74 of the kids in their report were psychologically harmed. 92 of them had physical health problems. Some of the physical health problems that kids had included fever, abdominal pains and vomiting.

The report also found that 48 of the kids witnessed violence. Most of violence that was witnessed came during attempts to remove them from the UK. 13 were physically harmed as a result of this. Another 38 kids were separated from their families, sometimes with the parents actually being put into isolation.