Since 2012, Australia has detained hundreds of children seeking asylum, often for years. Now a review has revealed the lasting physical and mental health impacts of this policy
By Alice Klein
4 April 2023
A rally against child detention, in Melbourne, Australia, on 12 June 2021
JAMES ROSS/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Children who were locked in Australia’s immigration detention centres in the past decade have high rates of mental health conditions, developmental concerns and nutritional deficiencies, according to the most comprehensive study of their health.
“We’d like policy-makers to recognise that detention is harmful for children and they should not be detained under any circumstances,” says Shidan Tosif at the Immigrant Health Service at the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, Australia, who led the study.
Australia has a policy of detaining all asylum seekers who arrive without a valid visa while their claims are reviewed. Adults are mostly housed in high-security immigration detention centres. Under Australian law, children should only be held in these facilities as a last resort and should preferably be detained in community housing with their families.
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However, from 2012, Australia began keeping hundreds of children in detention centres for long periods, often for years, after there was a surge in asylum seekers arriving by boat. These included children accompanied by families and those travelling on their own.
Tosif and his colleagues reviewed the medical records of 239 of these children who were referred to his hospital’s Immigrant Health Service, which provides medical and mental health care to asylum seekers and refugees. The children attended the service between 2012 and 2021, either while they were still in detention, which required them to be brought in by guards, or after they were released.
The children came from 15 countries, the most common being Iran. The average time they spent in detention was seven months for those held in facilities on Australia’s mainland and more than four years for those held in offshore detention centres on Nauru in Micronesia and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.