"I used to meet Foad at every meal distribution we organised," Yolaine Bernard, a member of the migrant solidarity group Salam, said. The 29-year-old from Sudan had been living on the streets around Calais for months. "I watched him sink deeper and deeper every day."

At some point "Foad didn't want to talk anymore," Bernard continued. "He stayed away. He even stopped eating with the other camp residents."

On a cold morning in January 2023, after distributing breakfast in the camp, Bernard and other volunteers got back into their van and drove away. They stopped at a nearby railway crossing. The barriers were down and a train whistle was sounding in the distance.

The train whistle continued to blow. Bernard looked up, and after a moment realised Foad was standing in the middle of the tracks, arms raised to the sky and talking to himself.

Panic-stricken, she struggled to sound her horn. "I wanted to take off my seat belt, but I didn't have time to open my door," she said. "Foad waved his hands at us, as if he wanted to say goodbye."

Foad Dango is one of the 391 migrants who disappeared on the France-Belgium-UK border between 1 January 1999 and 1 January 2024, and whose lives and deaths are recounted in this series.

At their limits

Dango's death shocked Bernard, but it did not surprise her. She said it wasn't the first time she had come across migrants who were "sliding very slowly". She feels powerless to respond to their distress. "It's all due to the life we make them lead," she said.

Serena Colagrande, the communications manager for Doctors Without Borders in France, said it's not just life in Calais that pushes migrants to their limits. It's all they've gone through before they get there as well.

"Certain experiences lived in the country of origin or along the migratory route, particularly in transit countries such as Libya, could prove traumatic for the migrants we meet in Calais," Colagrande said.

Doctors Without Borders' intervention in Calais has a strong focus on mental health. Six employees, including a nurse, a psychologist and two cultural mediators, meet migrants in the camps and offer on-site consultations.

"Some people suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, where they relive violent scenes," Colegrande said. "The violence experienced in Europe can reactivate these traumas or create more."

"Precariousness and the conditions of daily survival represent real violence," Lou Einhorn-Jardin, a psychologist who worked for several years with migrants in Calais, said. Homelessness, uncertain access to food and wash facilities, systematic expulsion and police violence (see Part 5) all leave marks on bodies and minds.

"Migrants are plunged into a state of permanent hypervigilance: never feeling physically safe means never feeling psychologically safe," Einhorn-Jardin said. "It's exhausting."

"Another problem facing migrants in Calais is the risk of isolation," Colagrande added. Some see their loved ones or fellow migrants cross the border without them. They lose track of others during their journey or - in the worst case - witness their deaths. It's "a significant loss of reference points that can have serious psychological consequences," Colegrande said.

All this and more can exacerbate anxiety disorders and depression.

"We are normalising things that are completely abnormal," Einhorn-Jardin said. "There are potentially traumatic events happening daily and there is no support for these people in public health systems."

She gave as an example the death of Nawall Al Jende, a 26-year-old Syrian who was struck by a vehicle on the A16 freeway near the Eurotunnel site in October 2015 (see Part 3). She died in front of her nine-year-old son and brother-in-law. "No psychological support was offered to them following this traumatic event!" she said.

A mental health crisis

Near death experiences can also be traumatising, yet those rescued from the Channel don't always get the support they need. Instead, Einhorn-Jardin said, they are too often abandoned to their fate, in the middle of the night and still soaking wet, with only a survival blanket.

"This type of response is totally inappropriate, it's dehumanising," Einhorn-Jardin said. "These people thought they were going to die, and no one is there to recognise the violence they've been through and to tell them that it's normal not to feel well after experiencing something like this."

Mental health research shows that prompt care after a psychological shock limits the risk of developing post-traumatic stress syndrome, Einhorn-Jardin said. Without it migrants could suffer long-term consequences that could follow them to the UK, if they ever make it.

"We know the consequences of not taking care of mental health, it's been documented," she said. "But in Calais, the authorities do nothing and assume it [will be fine]."

In July 2021, 46 British associations alerted the authorities to a series of suicides involving migrants in the United Kingdom. In their letter they counted 11 teenage victims, mostly from Ethiopia, but also from Eritrea and Afghanistan. All had arrived in England as unaccompanied minors between 2016 and 2021, and several had passed through Calais.

"Some had obtained refugee status, others were still waiting for a response to their asylum request," said Benny Hunter, co-founder of the Da'aro Youth Project, one of the organisations that signed the letter. "Several victims had visible symptoms of post-traumatic stress or alcohol or drug problems, while others had psychotic problems, suffered from paranoid delusions, and heard voices."

The letter reminded the authorities of their responsibilities in suicide prevention, and called for better mental healthcare for young refugees and asylum seekers at the local level. Hunter said budget cuts to the UK's healthcare system, long waits for treatment, and social and cultural reticence towards mental health have all hampered migrants' access to psychological care.

"I spent time in Calais and I met migrants who were doing badly," Hunter said. "But at that point they are often very resistant, because they have a positive idea of where they are going to end up."

Once they get where they're going, that optimism can come crashing down. Isolation, legal uncertainty, fear of being sent back (or somewhere else): arriving in England can be severely disillusioning and reawaken past traumas.

"Some psychologists call it the thawing of grief," Einhorn-Jardin explained. "When an individual finds himself in a more stable and secure situation, this is when old traumas can resurface."

No death in Calais is a one-off event

Foad Dango's suicide isn't the first to be recorded among migrants on the border.

Kim Le, a 24-year-old from Vietnam, took his own life in May 2017. Le had been placed in pre-trial detention on suspicion of aiding illegal immigration, but was subsequently moved to the psychiatric care unit of Seclin Hospital, near Lille. He killed himself after learning that his detention had been extended for an additional three months.

Louis, a 19-year-old from Ghana, took his own life while staying at the Croisilles Reception and Situation Review Centre. Described as fragile and isolated by the director, the young migrant committed suicide a few weeks after he had started treatment.

And Hassan Abbas Omar Saad, a 29-year-old from Sudan, took his own life in May 2022. He had first come to Europe in 2015 and had successively applied for asylum in Germany, France and then Switzerland. All three requests were refused.

He made his way back to northern France, where he survived as best as he could in a makeshift camp near the Transmarck area, a transit area for heavy goods vehicles bound for England.

That's where he was when the British government first announced the Rwanda deal, which would see asylum seekers arriving irregularly to Britain transferred to the African country. According a community activist, this new twist turned Saad upside down.

Deeply worried, tired from years of wandering in Europe, he gradually isolated himself from the rest of the group. Saad was discovered dead by his companions on 11 May 2022, hanging from a strap in an abandoned HGV trailer parked in the Transmarck area.

A vehicle that might once have taken him to England had become his tomb.

From openDemocracy