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Doctors see a new condition among immigrant children: fear of Trump
theguardian
Pediatricians serving undocumented immigrants report a spike in
anxiety and panic attacks after the US election, as children live with
threat of deportationIn the shadow of Trump: a doctor reports one boy has had crippling
stomach aches in class because he’s afraid he might return home to find
his parents gone.
Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters
At doctors’ offices across the United States, a new diagnosis has
been popping up in the medical files of immigrant children, their
friends and their families: fear of Trump.
Since the 8 November election, pediatricians and clinics serving
undocumented immigrants and other low-income patients have reported a
spike in anxiety and panic attacks, particularly among children who
worry that they or their parents might now face deportation.
One little boy in North Carolina has been suffering crippling stomach
aches in class because he’s afraid he might return home to find his
parents gone. In California, many families are reporting that their
children are leaving school in tears because their classmates have told
them they are going to be thrown out of the country.
Children are showing up in emergency rooms alone because their
parents are afraid of being picked up by Immigration and Customs
Enforcement if they show their faces. Even American-born children are
suffering – one boy in the south-east asked a doctor for Prozac because
he was worried about his undocumented friend.
“It’s as though a volcano erupted. It’s been awful,” said Mimi Lind,
director of behavioral health at the Venice Family Clinic, one of the
largest providers of healthcare to low-income families in southern
California. “People who don’t have a history of anxiety and depression
are coming forward with symptoms they’ve never had before. And people
who had those symptoms already are getting much worse.”
It’s too soon to put precise figures on the wave of Trump-related
anxiety, but health professionals and immigrant rights groups say it is
unmistakable. “People worry their families will be broken up, that
parents will be deported and children will end up in foster care, on a
scale that we’ve never seen before. The feeling out there is one of
great fear,” said Marielena Hincapié of the National Immigration Law
Center.
Some of the Trump-related anxiety was evident even before the
election, especially in states where Republican-dominated legislatures
have pushed through measures to make it harder for immigrants to access
education, healthcare and other basic services. Trump’s election,
however, turned the abiding worry into a full-blown crisis – not least
because his victory was unexpected.
Julie Linton, a pediatrician from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who
also serves on the American Academy of Pediatrics’ immigrant child
health special interest group, started receiving panicked calls from
patients at 6.30am on the morning of 9 November, and she has been
deluged since.
Many undocumented parents with sick children born in the United
States are now making contingency plans in case they are deported, she
says, and in so doing have to face an agonizing choice: whether to leave
their children behind, or to risk losing access to the care they need
in their home countries. She sees Syrian refugees as well as patients
from Mexico and Central America, where it may be difficult or
impossible, for example, to find devices to enable children with
neuromuscular disorders to walk.
“Parents are asking me: ‘What do I do? How do I set up a power of
attorney in case I’m deported?’” Linton said. “It’s hard enough to care
for a child with special healthcare needs without having to worry about
the threat of deportation.”
A group of immigrants and attorneys gather outside Trump Tower on 22
November to draw attention to Donald Trump’s proposed immigration
policies. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA
It is not just families and children that have felt the impact. Many
patients who are vulnerable anyway – alcoholics, drug addicts, those
with degenerative diseases or mental health struggles – have been
knocked backwards. “To them, it feels that another part of their power
has been taken away when they’ve just started to build themselves up
again,” said Eileen Garcia, a therapist who looks after HIV and Aids
patients at the Venice Family Clinic.
One of her patients, a middle-aged undocumented immigrant who wanted
to be called Maria (not her real name), said that while she had been
shocked when she received her initial HIV diagnosis she took it in
stride because she knew help was available. “But this,” she said, “feels
like a death sentence.”
As Maria sees it, she may lose access to treatment if the Trump
administration scraps President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, and she may
lose it, too, if she is deported and cannot find similar services back
in her home country (which she did not want to name). “It’s a double
worry,” she said.
The fear felt by many patients is reflected in the protective
instincts of their caregivers. For this story, doctors and therapists
were extremely careful not to give away patients’ names, or more than
the most basic details of their medical profiles, or even in some cases
the state where they live for fear of providing clues to authorities
pursing an anti-immigrant crackdown.
They also struggle to know what to say to address their patients’ concerns, especially at this early stage.
“Many of us feel pretty helpless right now,” Linton, the North
Carolina pediatrician, agreed. “We try to remain nonpartisan but we’re
unabashedly pro-child and that’s a hard place to sit right now. For me,
as a pediatrician and as a mom, it’s heart-breaking to think that a
child is worth less based on conversations happening at the local,
regional or national level.”
“This waiting time is the most anxiety-provoking,” Lind, the
behavioral health specialist said. “No one can say anything. We have no
way of allaying people’s anxiety with concrete facts.”
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