The psychological impacts of family separation were also highlighted by mental health experts who work closely with stateless people in Australia. The lack of mandated time frames for decision making regarding visa applications was identified by stateless people as particularly detrimental to their mental health. “So particularly my stateless clients who don’t have permanent residency, who are still seeking asylum and potentially who’ve been knocked back as well, so are quite far along in their protection seeking journey and are sort of—yes, had lots of knockbacks, they don’t have a lot of support in terms of services, then money is a real difficulty, food insecurity is another one, separation from family is one that I think I’ve seen more in stateless clients and in asylum seeker clients, so family’s often overseas still, so there’s a lot of isolation in that sense, a lot of worry for family overseas. Whether they’re still in dangerous or difficult situations, or just—even a client thinking about an elderly parent overseas, and “Will I see them again before they die?” “My main request of the Department is they just deal with my visa application in the same way they deal with other visa categories— at least have a mandated timeframe within which I can expect a decision. For this protection visa, I’m in a state of limbo. You have no idea what is happening and you can’t get hold of anyone. You can’t follow up on the status of your application. So some sort of mandated time frame for decision making is the least they could do.” — Psychologist, Torture and Trauma Rehabilitation Service 5.3 Mental health impacts of trauma and long-term uncertainty, including on young people “I struggle so much with my identity as a Rohingya. I advocate for it, but, to be honest, I struggle with it a lot. Out of anything else I could’ve been, why am I part of a group that’s persecuted so heavily in the world? I could’ve been somebody else and lived a normal life, never had to worry about all this legal stuff, all this racism. It’s very complicated, and I wish I wasn’t so deeply traumatised by everything, because now I—I barely live. I’m alive. I’m existing, but I’m not really living, because of all the trauma that’s happened over the years.” — Asma The mental health impacts of statelessness exacerbated by protracted periods of legal uncertainty in Australia are profound. Research participants described experiencing anxiety, depression, and trauma, often compounded by long-term uncertainty and a lack of control over their daily lives and futures. The inability to plan for the future, secure employment, or access education contributed to feelings of hopelessness and despair. Confusion about the visa system and a lack of updates from the Department regarding somebody’s status were identified across a range of interviews with stateless participants as contributing to mental health issues and a general sense of hopelessness. “I arrived in Australia over ten years ago. For more than a decade I have been worrying, waiting. Worrying and waiting.” — Kareem* 62 Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness | Understanding Statelessness in Australia — Amira* Prolonged periods of immigration detention—in Australia and offshore in Australia’s regional processing centres—was also observed to have a distressing impact on the mental health of stateless people “A lot of the experience of detention didn’t hit me until after I left. Back then, it was just a bunch of cloudy questions I pushed to the back of my head to get through it. It was all just happening, happening, happening, but I really wasn’t processing it, intellectualising it. It didn’t make sense to me. It was when we left detention in Darwin and came to Sydney that things really hit me. Once I started school and got to know the local community. High school is when it hit me the most.” — Asma Parenting newborn babies and young children in detention— particularly for first time mothers was also observed to be highly stressful for stateless people interviewed for this research. “Having a small baby in detention—our first baby—was hard. I was always crying. When she was a few months old, we got a knock on the door. It was immigration telling us we were being taken to a new detention camp. They didn’t tell us where. They took us to this place behind wire while we waited to be moved. It felt like jail. My daughter was crying, I was crying. My daughter was very unwell at the time and I had an appointment to see somebody in the detention centre, but they wouldn’t let me wait. A lawyer was coming to see me the next day but again, they said I couldn’t wait. We were taken to Nauru. Nauru was like a hell fire. It was a very bad place. It was too hot, my daughter was sick every day. Each night she had a high fever and was vomiting. We had to get permission to go to the doctor which was a 30 minute drive away. We had to take her every couple of days, always at nighttime. The guards would take us. It was very scary.” — Yasmin*