Following the most recent terrorist attacks carried out under the banner of radical Islamic theology, the issue of how the United States should respond to the Syrian refugee crisis became hotly debated among those seeking to be president. Some have supported that a religious test should be used, allowing Christian refugees to come to the U.S. while barring those who are Muslims. And some have said we should welcome refugees into our borders, as immigration has consistently been an engine of productivity for our nation.

Regardless of what course of action is adopted, it's important that the mental well-being of the approximately 2 million refugee children caught up in this crisis be weighed. I limit my discussion to children because there is no cogent argument that could blame children for their geopolitical circumstances. Furthermore, there is consensus among mental health professionals that childhood events, especially traumatic events like immigration, impact people for their entire lives.

Even Before Becoming Refugees

Families that become refugees are defined by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as those individuals who have fled their nations because of a well-founded fear that they will lose their lives or their freedom if they remain. In the ongoing Syrian crisis, children may have spent the majority of their lives amid rockets, bombs and gunfire. That means that prior to becoming refugees, children are exposed to the well-founded fears that their parents might suddenly die or be separated from them. Many children will witness scenes of violence and torture in the very neighborhoods where they once played. Although possible for both genders, girls more than boys are at a high risk of being sexually assaulted or trafficked.

Mental Health Outcomes

Conditions that drive families to become refugees have dramatic and negative effects on the mental health of children. Post-traumatic stress disorder is a condition where sufferers experience a life-threatening event and emotionally re-experience the trauma through nightmares or flashbacks. People with PTSD also cannot relax and are constantly scanning their environment for possible threats. As one of my patients with PTSD once shared, "Every time someone opens a soda can, it sounds like a bullet being fired." A person's ability to function is further deteriorated as they avoid situations that remind them of their previous trauma. For example, a child who experienced a massacre in his or her school may avoid all schools even after being relocated to an environment where such an event would be extremely unlikely.

Refugee Children May Have Rates of PTSD as High as 54 Percent

At least 400,000 Syrian refugee children will develop this serious and debilitating mental illness.

PTSD is not the only outcome that can be expected to plague many children from this ongoing conflict. Approximately 20 percent of these children will develop major depressive disorder. This is a disorder involving changes in energy, appetite, sleep, concentration, irritability or depressed mood, excessive guilt, loss of interest in activities and even recurrent thoughts of death and suicide. At least 400,00 Syrian refugee children will become depressed.

While these estimates cover just two of the most common mental illnesses, it does not take into account the high degree of suffering experienced by children who do not go on to develop a diagnosable mental illness.

A Solution

Many of these children will require ongoing specific treatment of their mental illnesses that will include psychotherapy and medications. There is a common sense solution to prevent these expensive and individualized treatments from overrunning the mental health systems of wherever they are ultimately resettled. Every day that we leave families as unsettled refugees in horrific conditions with unsettled futures, more and more children will develop mental illness.