A Nigerian man was hospitalised following his suicide attempt at Safi detention centre – the desperate act of a man whose appeal against the rejection of his asylum application had been turned down.
But was last month’s confirmed suicide attempt a tragic exception or the latest entry in a grim catalogue of despair in detention centres?
The Home Affairs Ministry told The Sunday Times that no deaths by suicide have occurred in detention in the decade since Malta began receiving boats of undocumented migrants from Africa, but it claimed it does not keep records of suicide attempts.
However, NGOs and migrants who have spent time in detention centres paint a grim picture of the toll that detention takes on psychological well-being.
“These people are very resilient but some do degenerate psychologically in detention, this is a reality,” said Katrine Camilleri, director of the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) Malta.
“We do know a considerable amount of detainees receive in-patient treatment at Mount Carmel, some after self-harm.”
A JRS study carried out in 2009 found almost 80 per cent of detainees reported their psychological well-being had been affected by detention.
Detainees face great uncertainty about their future as well as having to deal with traumatic events in their past. The prolonged deprivation of their liberty in crowded detention centres with little to stimulate them adds to their psychological anguish, Dr Camilleri said.
Former detainee Shami Taha Mohammed, who regularly visits detention centres as a member of an NGO, agrees.
“These people are desperate. Many spend a lot of time in silence, doing nothing, thinking bad things,” he said.
Migrants are detained for a maximum of 12 months, but if their asylum application is rejected by the Commissioner of Refugees and then rejected by the Refugee Appeals Boards, detention is extended to 18 months.
The Home Affairs Ministry said Detention Services staff – who are mostly ex-soldiers or police officers – receive in-house training to deal with detainees exhibiting symptoms of psychological distress.
Normal procedure would be for such detainees to be referred to the doctor on duty or taken to the nearest health centre for diagnosis and referral.
But Kristina Zammit, head of JRS assistant director and head of its psycho-social project, said it is difficult to spot detainees suffering from psychological problems because this is a taboo subject in their countries, and they try to hide it out of fear of being stigmatised and ostracised.
“Even today in Malta, if someone is in and out of Mt Carmel the neighbours would probably gossip. Imagine what would happen in a confined space with hundreds of people for some of whom mental illness is really taboo.”
80
The percentage of detainees in 2009 who reported their psychological well-being had been affected
JRS finds that detainees find it difficult to open up about their problems to NGOs because often other detainees have to act as translators, and they are reluctant to divulge personal issues.
There are no mental health nurses, psychologists or social workers based at detention centres.
“Many Detention Services staff try their best, but a few days’ training does not qualify them to be social workers,” Ms Zammit said.
People can be removed from detention early if they are classed as “vulnerable” following an assessment by the Agency for the Welfare of Asylum Seekers, but this can take months and they must remain in detention while the assessment is carried out.
“We should not be looking at a safety valve for the very desperate to get out – we should be asking if we need to detain people in those conditions, for all that time, at great cost to ourselves in the first place, when they have already suffered so much,” Dr Camilleri said.
Anecdotal evidence about suicide attempts in detention does occasionally leak into the public domain.
In the wake of disturbances at Safi detention centre last August, several migrants had claimed that a detainee had tried to hang himself – but this was denied by the Home Affairs Ministry.