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Dr. Stevan Weine, director of the UIC Center for Global Health, a partner of GCI, co-authored an opinion piece about the separation of children from migrant families at the Mexican border that appeared in The Hill. Weine and co-author Dr. Barry Sarvet, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School-Baystate, outline several long-term psychological consequences of separation on children in the article.
While the abominable policy of separating young children from their parents and placing them in inhumane institutional conditions has for now been discontinued, a reported 2,300 children, including infants and toddlers, were forcibly separated from their parents.
They are confined in mass detention facilities with no clear plans for being returned to their families. The chaotic environment of a detention facility, developed in haste seemingly without humane conditions, adequately trained staff and appropriate programming, is a dangerous place for children. It’s a set-up for injury, neglect, and further traumatization on top of the hardship of their migrant journey and the unimaginable pain of being torn away from their parents.
All of these children have been put in cruel circumstances which can forever impact them, emotionally, developmentally, and medically. For the rest of their lives, these children may experience sudden episodes of emotional dysregulation triggered by experiences and sensations that remind them of their original traumatic experience.
