Detention harm detailed
Print
Australia’s offshore detention drives a 20-fold rise in PTSD among refugees, UNSW finds.
A new study from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) reports that refugees detained offshore by Australia face a PTSD risk up to 20 times higher than asylum seekers held onshore for shorter periods.
The study, the largest of its kind on Australia’s immigration detention, highlights the severe and lasting psychological impacts of both onshore and offshore detention.
The UNSW team, led by Dr Philippa Specker, surveyed 990 adult refugees and asylum seekers between 2011 and 2018, including 215 individuals who had experienced detention.
Their findings, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, show that even short-term offshore detention in facilities like Manus Island and Nauru leaves refugees with high risks of enduring mental illness.
“This survey data allowed us to test...whether previous experiences of offshore detention impacted someone’s risk of experiencing long-term serious mental illness,” Dr Specker says.
The study shows that detained individuals were twice as likely to have probable PTSD, 2.5 times more likely to suffer from depression, and nearly twice as likely to have suicidal thoughts compared to those never detained.
Offshore detainees had a 2.71 times greater PTSD risk than those held onshore.
Notably, these mental health risks persisted even after controlling for other factors, indicating that detention itself plays a major role in deteriorating mental health.
“Being removed to another country by the government...can undermine one’s sense of safety, agency, and certainty about the future,” Dr Specker said.
UNSW researchers argue that Australia’s detention policy fails its deterrent goals while bringing severe, costly mental health effects.
Recent data from UNSW’s Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law shows offshore detention costs about 5550 times more than community-based asylum processes.
As other countries, including the UK, explore similar offshore models, UNSW’s findings offer timely evidence of their psychological and financial costs.
Australia’s experience suggests that immigration detention, especially offshore, carries long-lasting human consequences that persist well beyond the detention period.
