World Mental Health Day: Art and Messages That Reach Beyond Borders
The train carriages represented three stages in the families’ journey: The disappearance and search for answers; migration and the uncertainty that follows; and the psychological, social and economic consequences of ambiguous loss.
The fourth station represented a new beginning within a journey that remains unfinished. After years of waiting, it created space for families to give voice to their experiences and tell their stories. It invited us to listen to how a loved one’s absence has shaped their memories and daily lives. Here, families spoke of their resilience and the questions that remain unanswered, ensuring that missing persons and their families are not forgotten.
As part of its accompaniment programme, which provides psychological and social support to families of missing persons, the ICRC worked with families to develop activities that keep the memory of their loved ones alive. These activities were facilitated by family members who, after participating in Mental health and psychosocial support sessions, became accompaniers, supporting others facing similar experiences.
Over four months, families came together to create artworks, each expressing an experience, an emotion or a message. Through these pieces, they gave tangible form to what they carried within them, creating something they could see and share with the world to honor their loved ones. These activities also provided a safe space for families to come together. They shared food, stories and ways of coping. They supported one another, organized themselves and refused to be forgotten.
This station stood on the ground, outside the moving train carriages. Its stillness reflected the families’ own experience of lives held in suspension as they waited for answers.
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