At just 2 years old, Gulshan Yusufzai became an Afghan refugee due to the Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. After years of searching, the then-9 year old found a home in Sacramento with her family, where she has since dedicated her career to aiding the many other children enduring a life similar to her own beginning. “War has a tendency to take the humanity out of you,” she says.
As the executive director of Sacramento’s Muslim American Society — Social Services Foundation, an organization focused on refugee mental health, Yusufzai has been helping Afghan children and families settle in California’s capital since long before America’s full troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. Now, one of her organization’s primary goals is to help the latest influx of refugees — especially children and young adults — adapt to their new environment while taking care of their mental and emotional well-being.
With the subsequent rise of the Taliban came the arrival of nearly 80,000 Afghans to the U.S. Thousands of those refugees have been resettled in the Capital Region, already home to about 20,000 people of Afghan descent. Most stateside refugees are women and children; nearly 50 percent of those evacuated were under 18. Refugee youth often bring traumatic lived experiences, known as adverse childhood experiences, raising the demand for U.S.-based mental health services. A network of support groups has formed to provide culturally sensitive care and catch those falling through the cracks.
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