Sir, – I am confused by Orla Muldoon's opinion piece "Treating all refugees as traumatised is not helpful" (April 29th). Its tone seems to be one of reprimand conveyed wholesale to its readership for "the simplistic labelling" of Ukrainian refugees as "traumatised". Apparently this is because "images of deeply distressed refugees . . . have become a central representation of the conflict in the Ukraine". Surely, if these images have become a central representation, it is because that is what is happening?
It feels patronising in the extreme for her to suggest that the population of Ireland would define any refugees as “traumatised” to the exclusion of all other definitions and descriptions, as she later cites their skills and qualifications as if the two things must be mutually exclusive. It is entirely possible to be a teacher or a nurse or a builder, and be traumatised, and it is entirely possible for us to recognise both without the writer’s instruction.
Furthermore, her assertion that trauma – as opposed to psychological distress (something that she segues into from trauma after the first few paragraphs) – or any kind of distress simply “resolves itself”, or that “90 per cent of people who experience direct traumatic events do not have adverse outcomes in the long term” is, frankly, obtuse. The inference that people fleeing a country that is being invaded, bombed, destroyed and its people attacked, surrounded, and murdered will not be traumatised is absurd.
In my experience as a psychotherapist, it is apparent to me that trauma is stored in the body and remembered in the sympathetic nervous system and can be triggered quite easily and suddenly by a range of sensory stimuli, and that this has little or nothing to do with psychological states or psychological distress. Trauma varies from person to person so that what is very traumatising for one may not be at all for another.
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Either way, to dismiss the very realness of trauma for a people having to leave behind all their personal possessions, their pets, and even their loved ones as they are forced to flee from an invading army – forced, not fleeing due to making “rational decisions” – would be the essence of treating them in a way that engenders disempowerment by not naming the truth of their reality first. The fact of reframing things in the way that this article does feels misleading and accusatory since the implication is that we, the people of Ireland, are not supporting the fleeing Ukrainian refugees as well as we might, and not recognising all the economic and professional attributes that refugees bring to their host country.
Far from Ukrainians being labelled as “traumatised”, “distressed”, or “helpless”, the words I’m hearing in relation to the Ukrainian people are words like “strong”, “brave”, “resilient”, “proud”, “patriotic”, “courageous”, “determined”, with many admiring references to a president who is leading by example. – Yours, etc,
JUSTIN JOHN CARROLL,
Wexford.