2021 Articles

Healthier in Juárez

Malik, Elizabeth; Calvello-Hynes, Emilie; Whitfield, Jennifer

During my training in the Denver Health Emergency Medicine Residency, I noticed that my colleagues and I were seeing an increasing number of detained immigrants seeking emergency care for vague complaints such as inability to sleep, headaches or malaise. Taken as a whole, we felt many of these patients were presenting with somatic symptoms suggestive of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and undiagnosed depression. In October 2019, I traveled to the border towns of El Paso and Juárez to find out more about this disturbing trend.