Refugee mental health needs could overwhelm, experts fear

Iham Al Horani, a 32-year-old refugee living in Worcester, Massachusetts, said he has had little time to think about his mental health in between months of job hunting and shuttling his mother, recovering from sniper gunfire, to doctor's appointments.

[...] experts say it's important to keep tabs on the emotional state of new arrivals, since symptoms may not appear until months or years later — well after most resettlement support services have ended.

Ahmad Alkhalaf, a 9-year-old who arrived in the Boston area this past summer for medical treatment, said he used to have restless nights when he would relive his mother's screams from the night a bomb killed three of his siblings and left him without arms.

[...] stresses — finding a job, adjusting to a new culture or dealing with life apart from family — can also contribute to mental health problems, said Bengt Arnetz, a professor at Michigan State University who has been studying trauma in Middle Eastern refugees.

Alexandra Weber, chief program officer at the International Institute of New England, an agency contracted by the U.S. government to resettle refugees, agreed mental health services can be improved.

A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, declined to comment but pointed to general information on the office's website about federally funded programs for torture victims and its efforts at promoting "emotional wellness."

At the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, a Detroit-area nonprofit, public health manager Madiha Tariq said she hopes the government will hurry to get refugees out of squalid, dangerous refugee camps and to the U.S.