Many Greek migrants suffer from depression and discrimination in Germany

Since 2010, that marks the beginning of the financial crisis in Greece,  more than 200,000 Greeks have left the country and migration outflows have risen 300 per cent on pre-crisis level as youth unemployment soars to more than 50 per cent .

More than half of the population that left Greece has gone to Germany and the UK. Only in 2011, 60,000 Greeks have migrated to Germany seeking a better life in European Union’s most robust economy.

But the Greek debt crisis and all the negative media publicity that the country and its “lazy, unwilling to work or pay their taxes” people received over the past years have shaped public opinion in many European countries, including Germany.

According to a report published in Greek media, more than 600 Greek patients are being treated in the Humboldt Municipal Outpatient Mental Health Clinic in Berlin‘s Wittenau district. Three out of four of these patients are people who migrated to Germany after 2010, when the financial crisis hit Greece hard.

Although many have found good jobs and a better life in Germany, others have not been so fortunate.
Some are barely surviving, while others suffer conditions of cruel exploitation working unregistered and receiving meagre wages.

Discrimination against new comers from Greece is increasing and many are mocked for their origin.  Very often Greeks are called to apologize for the Greek politicians and explain the debt crisis. Waiters are often wondering out loud whether their Greek customers will have enough money with them to pay for their food.

This adds to the emotional trauma and stress.

Greek patients make up 15 percent of those who visit the Humboldt clinic, which receives about half of Berlin’s mentally ill. Most of them use antidepressants and others are going through psychoanalysis.

Despoina Papadimitratou, psychologist in the outpatient clinic,  explained to Greek media that Greeks experience mental health problems similar to those who come from a country at war.

“They have a similar profile to that of war refugees. They suffer from post-traumatic syndrome which is expressed through depression, phobias, panic attacks and neuroses,” Papadimitratou said adding that most of the Greeks feel like that have been violently uprooted from their home and it was not theri choice to migrate.

“Many of them were in such desperate need to migrate that they didn’t have the chance to prepare. They come here without speaking the language and encounter racism”.