Online workshop 24 November 2022, 09:30-13:30

In November 2022 AiS invited its AiS members to gather for an in-depth exchange on matters of psychological wellbeing and the mental health of exiled scholars with a special focus on how to navigate the German health system. International scholars that had to deal with restrictions to their personal and academic freedom and political prosecution, with protracted displacement, border regimes or setting themselves up in a new environment have brought up the issue of psychological wellbeing related to their migration stories. May it be a traumatic or tumultuous past or a precarious present, people have to cope with different circumstances as an international migrant scholar. The workshop dealt with two main themes: First, it was negotiated what mental health encompasses and what the German health system offers in this regard, how to receive access to the health system or psychotherapists and which additional options exist beyond official institutions. Second, the workshop offered a space to discuss some of the mental health issues migrant or exiled scholars may face in their daily lives and which possibilities people have in different social networks to approach this. The workshop was held by psychological psychotherapist (M.Sc.-Psych.) Till Voigts of the psychosocial counseling of the Kontakt- und Beratungsstelle für Flüchtlinge und Migrant_innen e.V. (KuB, Contact and Counseling Center for Refugees and Migrants).