Rehabilitation – not for refugees.

A psychiatric rehabilitation centre has rightly said they will admit a detained refugee into their facility to undergo a rehabilitation program on condition that the Australian immigration department will not release the refugee back into detention after the patient is discharged. The department of Immigration and citizenship has refused to guarantee this and hence the mentally ill refugee will remain administratively and indefinitely detained in an immigration detention centre. To quote one of the psychiatrists who has assessed the refugee, treating a detainee for mental illness and then putting him back again in detention after completing treatment is like covering a burn with a band aid until it heals and then burning the healed wound again. Only the Minister of Immigration, Brendan O Connor, has the discretionary power to allow the “wound” to heal but he chooses not to.