The presentation is dedicated to the impact of community violence, structural racism, COVID-19, and community violence on immigrant and marginalized mixed-status families. Changes in federal immigration policies have led to increasing enforcement, reducing access to public benefits for immigrants, and removing their legal protection and their qualification for a different status. These changes lead to the development of the-racial trauma, defined as a particular type of distress experienced by a substantial number of people of color and marginalized individuals while living in a sexist, racist, and classist society (“Traumatic impacts of community violence, COVID-19, and civil unrest on immigrant families,” n.d.). Young children who live in mixed-status families where one parent or both of them are undocumented are particularly vulnerable to ethno-racial trauma due to social violence and structural inequities.
Threats for children from mixed-status families that have a highly negative and traumatic impact on their mental health include confusion, potential family separation, and the risk of parents’ detention and deportation. Traumatic stress for them is also determined by family rupture, community fragmentation, and political and social violence. In the United States, 7 million children live in mixed-status families – 4,9 million of them were born in the country, and 775,000 are undocumented (“Traumatic impacts of community violence, COVID-19, and civil unrest on immigrant families,” n.d.). During the COVID-19 pandemic, these families are the most socially unprotected as their access to public benefits and governmental services is substantially limited.
The presentation introduces the term syndemic as a particular model of health that includes complex biosocial elements: COVID-19, structural inequities, ethnic-racial violence, and immigration policy enforcement. As a response, radical healing should be allied when working with social and community violence in immigrant communities to promote their safe and respectful life. The components of radical healing include critical consciousness, collectivism, strength and resistance, self-knowledge and cultural authenticity, and radical hope. Support of immigrant and mixed-status families implies the increase in availability and accessibility of government services and the reduction of barriers to accessing vital resources.
For refugees, mixed-status families, and immigrants, traumatic experience is connected with community violence, poverty, hunger, political, cultural, social, and racial persecution, and targeted identity and beliefs. In addition, internal drug policy enforcement has led to discrimination against minority communities. At the same time, young people from immigrant families have a great potential for accommodation and acculturation due to family and community support, multilingual capacity, coping strategies, and resourcefulness. At the same time, adolescents from minority families that immigrated a long time ago are particularly vulnerable to increased substance, drug, and alcohol use during the pandemic. There are multiple reasons for it, including COVID-19-related distress, the impact of isolation, cyberbullying, mental health issues, structural inequities and racism, economic challenges, disrupted family support networks, and childcare policies.
Activating solutions to prevent increased drug, alcohol, and substance abuse among adolescents should include universal screening to detect trauma, adversity, and distress. All risk factors that contribute to inequities should be eliminated, while protective factors should be strengthened to encourage the establishment and development of positive cultural identity (“Traumatic impacts of community violence, COVID-19, and civil unrest on immigrant families,” n.d.). Finally, adolescents should be provided with access to all essential services to promote health and health-seeking behaviors. All in all, the presentation not only educates but forces people to review their social beliefs and contribute to the elimination of community violence.
Reference
Traumatic impacts of community violence, COVID-19, and civil unrest on immigrant families [Presentation] (n.d.). Web.