They´re orphans but their parents are still alive

Translated/ By Misha Galván

DURANGO, DGO.-Violence inflicted towards children through abandon, it´s one of the principle causes of risk for mental health. This can be reflected on drugs addiction, depression, or suicide, perhaps not on childhood but while growing up.

Durango has recorded suicides on minors since the age of nine, and presents drug consumption like crystal since the age of eight on children.

Officially the last case registered by the Mental Health Institute of Durango (Ismed, by its acronym in Spanish), about suicide victims dates from 2018, when a nine years old committed suicide in the ravines region, the annual numbers was about 15 minors victims of self-inflicted death, for 2019 the statistics were reduced down to 10, and within those numbers there was a 13 years old. So far this year of 2020, there is no report of under ages committing suicide.

On this topic, Soledad Ruiz Canaan director of the institute explained that this kind of violent death is caused by multiple facts, but in the children´s and teenagers´ case the facts related to the family are abandon and a deficient upbringing.

Regarding the drug intake affecting children, measures of the Juvenile Detention Center (CIJ by its acronym in Spanish), reflect in the entity that 67 percent of the people using toxic substances are between the 10 and 19 years old.

Waiting for Mom

Samuel lives with his grandmother, to who he refers as mother. He is six years old, and two years ago his mother left him in that house because she is addicted to crystal. Sometimes she comes, stays a few days but then goes to the street. His grandma Juana knows the child has hope for his mother´s return.

“Although I try to give him all the love and attention he deserves, his necessities are never covered, because I am not his mother”, says the woman of 57 years old.

Similar situations have become usual in the entity, and one of the facts provoking them are drugs.

However Monica Urbina Martinez, teacher at Psychotherapy Gestalt, remarks that cases of parents addicted to other habits are present, as an example, technology, throughout mobiles. Another situation that brings out abandonment, as she indicated is poverty; this happens because the people in charge of the household take more work hours in the day than the usual, because parents loose time with their children, they can feel abandoned.

“We´re raising orphans with living parents”, adverted the psychologist.

The problem of this is that the “kids are growing up alone and with an emptiness inside them and an emotional abandon”, Urbina Martinez explained.

An example of this could be the minor committing suicide allegedly because they were scolded in school or their tutors, but in reality is about the emptiness that comes out of abandonment.

A low upbringing carries within severe problems, for example the predisposition of the person affected to drugs addiction.

The Infant Rehabilitation Center of Analco (CRIA, by its acronym in Spanish), located in Durango´s city, is the only place suitable to attend under ages who present problems with toxic substances. The site recognizes the family, parents specially, have a direct influence on children, not only to generate the conditions to start the intake but also as to avoid the relapse.

Nowadays, in the center there are 10 under ages, the youngest has 13 years and the director Martina Sosa Chavez affirms that most have home problems, like violence, lack of attendance or the parents are on drugs also. This is one of the principle reasons for relapse on users of this place.

Mateo of 14 years old, a few years ago tasted for the first time the marijuana, said that some friends from the block invited him. It was a gift, and then he started buying. After that, in middle school one friend offered him pills and, the effect of these was something he liked so he started searching them by his own.

Little by little, he increased the dose, doing it in his house, where his grandma takes care of him because his mom is absent. She´s not addicted to drugs but she simply had Mateo and continued with her life, but left him with her mother.

The grandma, whom he calls mother, didn´t noticed the narcotics until Mateo wasn´t functional, due to him meeting the crystal, which he started smoking and then injecting to have a major effect.

When this happened, the minor started with aggressions towards family, even to the elder, he didn´t wanted to go to middle school and started robbing house objects to buy crystal.

He says that one time he was too high hat he had a crisis and started banging his head against the wall, after this was when he was taken immediately to a rehabilitation center, where he stayed three months and then liberated.

Resentment, the emotion he felt when he came out. A little time after he relapsed and wasn´t until he got to CRIA that Mateo discovered he had a health issue.

In the interview he says he doesn’t want to have a relapse, and as a well expressed answer he said his mother´s abandonment was a trigger for his addiction.

“I´ve always wanted her to be with me, and not having her, knowing I was abandoned created an empty void I didn´t know how to fill”, he explained.

In his case, the mother only decided to not take over him, which carried out a low upbringing, the psychotherapist Gestalt Monica Urbina Martinez remarks that it not only can impact in a minor but also can be reflected in the adulthood throughout emotions, violence, suicide or delinquency.

By Sandra Nallely Urbina Olaguez

Collaborative/Enlace magazine