

By MELISSA WELLHAM
There have been 26 cases of children self-harming at a single asylum seeker detention centre in Darwin in the past 16 months. And disturbingly some of these children are as young as nine-years-old.
Child psychiatrists have issued warnings for the past 10 years that keeping children in detention centres would likely have negative consequences for their mental health – and now they are devastatingly being proved correct.
The many stories to emerge from this one detention centre, are simply heartbreaking.
Children and teenagers have turned to cutting; slashing their wrists and arms with razor blades. One 17-year-old boy tried to hang himself and when he was caught, insisted that he would try again. Another teenager repeatedly bashed his head against a metal pole – and had to be hospitalised – after his case review to be allowed to remain in Australia, failed.
A nine-year-old boy tried to overdose on his mother’s painkillers.
He wanted to get out. He wanted an escape.
He said later that he was “going crazy” in detention.
And while this case has been listed in official documents as an incident of “self-harm” (because the staff at the detention centre are not medically qualified to make an assessment as to whether they count as attempted suicide) – it is acknowledged that the 9-year-old boy took the tablets knowing what they were going to do to him.
Top Comments
Why is mamamia continuously writing and campaigning about asylum seekers. It seems to be on here every second day. Can't you give it a break or at least a much campaign time as other issues?
I struggle to find people who agree with what the government are doing to refugees, yet they keep right on doing it. I seriously have no idea who to vote for on election day because they both disgust me. I can only hope that we will one day look back on this in shame.