My Health – Newsletter
What is MyHealth? Is a project that aims to improve healthcare access for vulnerable migrants and refugees by developing and implementing models based on the knowhow of a European multidisciplinary network with particular focus on women and unaccompanied minors...
CTAR Refugee Week event, ‘DIFFERENT PASTS, SHARED FUTURE’
'DIFFERENT PASTS, SHARED FUTURE' Thursday 21st June 12.30pm – 2.00pm at the University of Essex, Room TC1.11 (Teaching Centre) The programme includes the screening of the film 'THOSE WHO SURVIVED – Stories of Dignity' directed by Yorgos Avgeropoulos This...
Are refugees in Europe facing a mental health crisis?
Since 2014, MSF has run a joint programme with Babel DC - a local Greek NGO that offers mental health services and support to the refugee and migrant community currently stuck in Greece. "We share patients," says Anastasia. "They [Babel] have a psychiatrist on...
Beyond the Workshops of HR&SR – The Inside out of the “Babel Project”
I started to write this article just after the last support workshop in Babel – trying to remember most of it. Impossible. Then I looked at the guidelines for an article: short and energetic content.... Personal – this could be a place to start. I remember the...
Return of the far right: Greece’s financial crisis has led to a rise in violent attacks on refugees
Nikos Gionakis faces a similar predicament. He is the head of a mental health centre called Babel whose stated mission – until now – has been to help destitute foreigners. The problem is that the more public health spending is cut, the greater the need for aid...
AYS SPECIAL: Closed borders are damaging our mental health
The Babel Day Care Center team, has been worked with refugees, migrants and volunteers for years. One of them is Nikos Gionakis who in the interview with for AYS warns about the conditions people are left to live in, conditions devoid of hope, and they urge for...
Experts sound alarm over mental health toll borne by migrants and refugees
Nikos Gionakis, a psychologist with the Athens-based mental health unit Babel, tells the story of Hassan, 34, who fled Syria with his four children. “Passing from Turkey to Greece, he was forced to get into a boat by smugglers. Two of his kids drowned as the...
Refugees in Greece. Traumas of Babel
The second instalment of Michal Pavlásek's ‘Stories from the Babel Archipelago’, this time about the work of social and community centres in Greece.*This article is part of a five-part series, available to read here. Over the last decade many social and community...
The Psychological Toll of Volunteering at a Refugee Camp
"I would cry very often. I couldn't control my emotions." Lazar Dimitrijevic first came to Samos, Greece, last March. The 23-year-old, who was earning his master's degree in human security, took a short trip to the island to see the situation "with my own...
