Late last year, a young refugee from Sudan woke up, showered, dressed, and left home for the last time. He took his own life and his body was later found by the river Torrens in Adelaide. Despite not knowing him personally, it was still bitter news to hear. At such a tender and confusing age –16– where life barely begins on both mental and physical facets, he should have been given another chance.

As expected of an African culture plagued by years of stigmatisation to mental illness, the local community remained silent and organised a hasty funeral where not too many questions were asked. Through my work with this community, I was later informed by elders that the admission of mental health problems within a family could disgrace it for generations. Neither the sufferer’s children nor their grandchildren would be able to wed as mental illness is considered hereditary. This was the reality that slapped that boy in the face. Bring your family shame, or die quietly, leaving some hope for your siblings and their children. Until this day, thousands of newly arrived refugees from Africa and the Middle East suffer in silence because they were raised in a culture and society that looks at mental illness as taboo, a topic that cannot be discussed without causing discomfort.
My name is Mujahid Ahmed, and I am a Community Health Worker specializing in refugee health and CALD communities. My work fortunes lie not in my double degree in Psychology and Immunology but in that I am of CALD background myself, originally hailing from Sudan. Many of the stigmas that these communities deal with on a daily basis are the same ones that I have dealt with over the past twenty-three years that I have been alive.

In a Western setting, mental illness is usually treatable using either one or a combination of prescribed medication, counselling and community support. To many non-Western countries however, mental health is a social construct arising from beliefs about the nature of the illness and the human body. As a result, mental illnesses such as depression are considered to be as lethal as AIDS and just as communicable. People who admit to mental illnesses are rapidly excluded from their communities, minor mental health illnesses are seen as early indicators of future psychosis. In a worse case scenario, the CALD sufferer receives the same treatment as a rabies victim in the previous century.

Before writing this article I had spent days researching stigma within CALD communities. However, I found that my writings were ‘cultured’ by knowing first-hand what it means to be a mental health sufferer of a CALD background. For me to be able to fight the stigmas surrounding mental health, I first had to overcome my own. Now to spread the message: mainstream mental health services need to understand the importance of a change in their focus and the need for culturally effective mechanisms that strengthen ties between CALD communities and mainstream mental health. The key step in eradicating stigma in CALD communities lies in our understanding as mental health professionals of how these inherited notions have the power to govern thousands of CALD communities worldwide who might, at first glance, seem to have nothing in common but are actually fundamentally quite similar.

Mujahid Ahmed is based at Shopfront Youth Health and Information Service, 3-4/72 John Street, Salisbury, South Australia. The service is designed specifically to cater for the health needs of youth aged between twelve and twenty- five. It provides free and confidential health information and counselling on a wide range of issues including emotional, mental and physical health as well as ongoing support in accessing other services.

Shopfront also regularly runs group programs where youth dealing with the same issues can meet and support each other under trained staff supervision. The staff includes health professionals such as nurses, social workers, and community health workers of CALD backgrounds. For any queries please contact Shopfront on 08 82811775 or via email Mujahid Ahmed