Women Mental Health and Trafficking

Abstract

“Trafficking in persons,” “human trafficking,” and “modern slavery” have been used as umbrella terms for the act of recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing, or obtaining a person for compelled labor or commercial sex acts through the use of force, fraud, or coercion. Trafficking in persons is an insult to human dignity and an assault on freedom, and robbing basic human rights (US Report, 2015). Reliable data on trafficking are difficult to obtain owing to its illegal nature; the range and severity of trafficking activities; and variations in how trafficking is defined. It is supposed that 49 per cent of the victims are women, 21 per cent girls, 18 per cent men and 12 per cent boys. 53 per cent were involved in sexual exploitation and 40 per cent in forced labor (UN, 2014).

Research findings show that the limitations of current methodologies affect what is known about human trafficking and health. Moreover, findings demonstrate an urgent need for representative and non–purposive recruitment strategies in future investigations of trafficking and health as well as research on risk and protective factors related to human trafficking and health, intervention effectiveness, long-term health outcomes. The psychological impact of victimization may be more severe than the physical violence. Victims who have been rescued from sexual slavery, typically present with various psychological symptoms and mental illnesses, including the following: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, panic disorder, suicidal ideation, Stockholm syndrome, and substance abuse. In this talk current findings will be presented and discussed.

Disclosure of interest

The author has not supplied his declaration of competing interest.