“To stay in the United States, asylum-seekers need to prove that they are at risk of persecution in their home countries. But often they have little evidence to back them up. The paper trails from their past lives — such as hospital or police records — are often inaccessible. If they were tortured in a secret government prison or persecuted by the police, that kind of official record may not exist at all.

Instead, what remain are the stories that migrants tell, and whatever marks those experiences have left on their bodies and minds. So these cases depend on doctors and psychologists who can translate scars and symptoms into evidence — and who can tell when a person’s ability to testify may have been altered by trauma.

That means that many asylum-seekers depend on a network of clinician volunteers, trained by nonprofits such as Physicians for Human Rights and HealthRight International.”

See more via link:

https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/25/asylum-seekers-psychologists/