Refugees struggle to cope with their traumatic memories

"If I don't feel happy, I can't paint."

In the past four years, Hasan Abdalla has painted less and less. Instead, he keeps his canvases rolled up and stacked in a closet in his apartment in London.

Abdalla, a Syrian Kurdish painter, applied for asylum in the U.K. four years ago.

He's one of tens of thousands of refugees recently arrived in Europe, and now arriving ingrowing numbers. He's also one of the many struggling to cope with what he has livedthrough.

It took almost a year for his claim to be accepted, but he was granted five years ofhumanitarian protection that allows him to live and work in the U.K. He's settling into a newapartment with his wife and youngest son after a string of temporary housing.

Three days after the family moved in, there are still boxes on the floor. Abdalla's wife hasunpacked two patterned cups and a small bag of Syrian coffee from home. A soccer matchbroadcast by Al-Jazeera plays quietly in Arabic on the TV.

In Syria, Abdalla sold his abstract and expressionist work for as much as $5,000, but inLondon he says he's lucky to get a quarter of that price at outdoor markets. "I used to beproductive and I thought that nothing is difficult for me to paint whatever I want, I couldpaint," Abdalla said.

But then he hears about another friend or family member killed in Syria. "I live that anxiety that worry. If you are worried and anxious, you can't paint."

Abdalla's anxieties are not unusual among the refugees now flooding into Europe, a 2015study suggests.

The German Chamber of Psychotherapists has released numbers suggesting half of therefugees in Germany are traumatized by their experiences. Most commonly, they suffer frompost-traumatic-stress disorder or depression often both.

Of those diagnosed with PTSD, 40 per cent have made plans to take their own lives. Onlyfour per cent get psychotherapy. There are no statistics about the number of refugees whohave committed suicide.

Psychotherapy is vital

Doctors who conducted the study say psychotherapy is a crucially important treatment. Theywarn medication isn't enough to overcome PTSD and its symptoms, which include panicattacks, heart palpitations, difficulty breathing, dizziness, and flashbacks.

For most, theflashbacks are scenes of what made them flee. More than half of the adult refugeessurveyed for the German study witnessed or experienced violence. A quarter of the childrensurveyed have seen dead bodies.

Abdalla knows all of those things. Syrian police arrested him at an airport in 2010 as hereturned from an art exhibition in Sweden. They confiscated his passport, then imprisonedand tortured him for days. Abdalla can't remember exactly how many.

After his release, Abdalla joined the Syrian uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. Herecalls meeting with friends to protest with hundreds of people in the streets of Damascus.

"They wanted no more than this just democracy." Then he remembers seeing two of hisfriends shot down.

"When my friends were shot dead, I knew it was my turn," he said. "So I decided to flee."

Abdalla travelled alone through Lebanon to Turkey, and then for seven days by truck toEngland in 2011. Along the way, he sold paintings to pay smugglers for a Danish passportand travel.

When Abdalla arrived in England, he unrolled his remaining paintings. He says what he sawon the canvas didn't match his memories of home. When he picked up a paint brush, henoticed his style had changed.

"In my last paintings there is a lot of melancholy a lot of depression, as I believe, becauseeverything is destroyed," he says. "No longer perfect figures; no longer known elements; nolonger traditional colours; no longer that happy background of happy experiences."

Separated from his family and surrounded by strangers at a temporary refugee home, Abdallasays he began to feel depressed.

The stigma of mental illness

Authorities seldom talk to refugees about the mental health services available to them, saysAlex Storer, who works for a U.K. mental health charity called Mind. Depending on arefugee's cultural background, they also might not know to ask for this kind of supportbecause of the stigma around mental illness in their native country.

"If [refugees] haven't been supported in terms of their mental health, they're much morelikely to become isolated," Storer says. "It's about making sure that integration can happen,and people are supported to be active citizens."

People who seek asylum in the U.K. can access public health services, but Storer says it'sdifficult to get help for mental illness. Injuries and other physical ailments are prioritizedwhile depression, anxiety, and PTSD can go undetected and untreated. Often, asylum-seekersaren't referred to a mental health specialist until they attempt suicide or self harm.

"As far as they are not reaching the crisis point, their mental health may be deteriorating butthey don't get any support around that," Storer said.

In Canada,Prime MinisterJustin Trudeau has said he wants to accept 25,000refugees by the end of 2015. Some refugees already in the country hope Canada is preparedto unpack the mental health baggage new asylum-seekers bring with them.

One of them, Ahmadou Gitteh, became a refugee while studying at Carleton University inOttawa in 2011.

Death threats by email

He received death threats by email after rejecting a government intelligence job in his nativeGambia,a narrow strip of land in Africa surrounded by Senegal. He knew it wouldn't besafe to return home, so he applied for asylum.

When he saw images of the current refugee crisis in a newscast this summer, Gitteh says hehad to look away. He doesn't watch the news anymore because it makes him cry. "More andmore people become me every day," he said.

Gitteh doesn't know when or if he'll see his home again. He says the thought made him wantto commit suicide.

That's why he started seeing Berak Hussain, a counsellor for international students atCarleton. She has worked with refugees from different countries, but with similar struggles trauma, grief, disbelief, anxietyand depression.

"There's a lot pain from the losses," she said. "They're people like you and I who were at thewrong end of the world when politics and violence and greed and hatred came into theirlives."

Hussain says there is an extremely high chance of recovery for refugees with mental illness ifthey get help. Awareness is a critical first step.

Gitteh, who says Hussain saved his life, didn't know about Carleton's counselling serviceuntil the university's international student centre referred him.

Unlike Gitteh, Abdalla hasn't seen a counsellor or therapist and still struggles with feelings ofisolation, vulnerabilityand anxiety.

He says nobody in the refugee-assistance system ever asked about his mental state.