Hazara Nation

PSYCHIATRISTS say they have identified a new mental illness that afflicts asylum seekers in Australia — a combination of major depression, anxiety and psychosis.

One former oncology nurse, who now works with asylum seekers, said her new patients were often more traumatised than people diagnosed with terminal cancer.

The condition was discussed at yesterday's Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists' Congress in Melbourne.

Melbourne University associate professor Suresh Sundram said the clinical features of the unnamed syndrome were similar to post-traumatic stress disorder, major depression and anxiety disorders.

It was caused by the chronic and prolonged stress, occasional acute distress and repeated "rejections and humiliations" attached to their situation, he said.

"The effect on memory and concentration is very significant — especially short-term memory, which seems to ebb away completely," he said. "There is a pervasive dejection."

At any one time the illness affected about 40 of the 180 to 200 people at Melbourne's Asylum Seekers Resource Centre, and was more prevalent as they got closer to the end of the process, he said.

It can persist for months even after a protection visa is granted. He said it demanded a "social cure": the end of mandatory detention and expedited visa processes.

Dr Fiona Hawker, formerly in charge of psychiatry at South Australia's Glenside Hospital, which housed psychiatric patients from the Woomera and Baxter detention centres, has identified what she called "Baxter syndrome" — an even more acute version of the malady.

She told the symposium it was common to all but one of the 70-plus asylum seekers who came to the hospital from Baxter, suffering episodes of agitation and violence, reduced appetite, nightmares and disturbed sleep, anger, anxiety, auditory and visual hallucinations and severely damaged short-term memory.

It was caused by their mistreatment, stress and alienation in detention and the trauma associated with an "unpredictable and arbitrary" visa application process, she said.

"I don't think I have ever worked in a situation where my individual humanity was challenged at such a level," she said.

Mary Harvey, a trained oncology nurse who now runs counselling at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, said that before asylum seekers' applications were rejected they were like people who had been diagnosed with cancer.

"Once they have a negative ministerial decision, it's like working with clients who have exhausted all available cancer treatments," she said.