What Long-Term Trauma Symptoms do the Collective Healing Approaches Address?  

In recent research conducted by survivor leaders at Azadi, focusing on the effects of trafficking on the mental health of people with lived experience in Kenya, the findings identified that survivors of human trafficking go through both long-term and short-term mental health challenges. If these needs aren’t attended to, they might develop severe long-term mental health concerns. The most common effects associated with human trafficking included depression, drug and substance use, shame, guilt, suicidal and self-blame ideologies, feelings of hopelessness, fear of strangers, loss of appetite, lack of interest in things one initially had interest in, and sleeping disorders including insomnia and nightmares. 

The research established that people with lived experiences have difficulty forming and sustaining relationships due to unique barriers to self-expression and the capacity to take up space. Other respondents reported that family or friends can easily re-trigger memories about the abuse or the abuser. People with lived experience are often plagued with deep shame, guilt, feelings of unworthiness, and alienation. Survivors are therefore unable to access relevant relational and familial support. 

Trafficking is a form of abuse that involves polyvictimsation, where survivors experience multiple types of victimisation, such as physical abuse, verbal abuse, and sexual abuse.

It is an alienating form of abuse that impacts not just survivors’ bodies but also causes an internal self-mistrust, detaching survivors from their sense of self and safety, and dramatically shifting their view of self and the world. Survivors sometimes may not talk about their experiences after trafficking, leading to accumulated resentment, anger, urge for revenge, loss of hope, and a multitude of emotions experienced simultaneously, which can go unaddressed for a long time. Mostly, society assumes that being out of the trafficking situation and providing short-term solutions like accommodation is enough, thus subjecting survivors to more harm when they do not fully integrate.

This significantly derails survivors’ capacity for personal growth, development, and healing as a consequence of being in survival mode throughout the period of abuse and long after rescue. Upon rescue, survivors of long-term trauma are forced to invest their time and energy in relearning primary psychological functions, such as the feeling of safety, and transitioning out of survival mode to redefine their sense of self and relearn their own emotional accessibility. The incapacity to grow socially or psychologically and to connect significantly influences the human functions of people with lived experience.