Nauru: "they are in a prison without a sentence"

07 Dec 2018

Dr Patricia Schmid is a psychiatrist, part of the MSF team providing much needed mental health services to people on Nauru. MSF provided mental healthcare for 11 months, before being forced to leave by the Nauruan government in October. 

Transcript

They feel like they are in a prison without a sentence. People are sent there, and they don’t want to be there, they don’t have visa, they cannot get out. 

All my clients who were a single man, they used to say that I’m not a child so I’ll never get out of here. Because people are now doing something for the kids

People are losing hope even more because some people have left, and they stayed, and the ones who stayed there they have the feeling of having been forgotten and this is a hard feeling because you believe nobody will ever remember you … so there is no reason for you to live.

People are very depressed, people are trying to kill themselves very often and this is the consequence of indefinite detention.