Exploited and overlooked, individuals victimized by modern-day slavery often begin their usurpation by fraudulent, deceptive promises for financial stability or through coercive forcible measures of kidnapping or violent abuse into subservience and exploitation.

Traffickers’ tactical emphases on force, fraud and coercion have helped make this injustice thrive for far too long and its exploitative services profitable as well, generating $150 billion annually. These ploys deter victims from seeking freedom or help, ultimately keeping them under the exploitation of their traffickers; these coercive techniques utilized to maintain the trafficking of individuals permits traffickers to have successful command and dominance over the actions (or inactions) and mentality of their victims.

Such abhorrent conditions, malpractice and heinous treatment hold understandable ramifications over victims’ mindset and mental health, which can become a long-term suffering.

According to a Trauma Center article titled, “Invisible Chains: Psychological Coercion of Human Trafficking Victims,” the purpose of psychological coercion is for increased control and to support the perpetrators’ ability to exploit for personal and financial gain, and such subservience to a trafficker ultimately forms a coercive relationship between the perpetrator and trafficking victim, as the enslaved become more dependent on their trafficker, not only for survival but emotionally. This increasing dependence on the trafficker eases the perpetrator’s manipulation of his/her victims’ mental states, as they are taught to be distrustful of outsiders. This ultimately manifests itself by victims becoming more apprehensive or frantic at the idea of law enforcement, whom they are taught to fear and associate with deportation. They may also be forced to fear police, threatened that harm be done to their families if their trafficker is reported or they cooperate with law enforcement. Trafficking victims may also refuse to report on their traffickers because their present exploitation may sadly be better than their former circumstances in which they may have faced domestic abuse or violence. According to the US Health Department’s Administration for Children and Families, victims may develop a coping or survival skill mindset which exhibits a loyalty or positive feelings towards their trafficker, often precluding them from seeking help.

Perpetrators’ degradation and dehumanized treatment of their victims often manipulates those enslaved into not viewing themselves as victims, as they self-blame for their present circumstances or in the case of exploited children, those brought from other countries experiencing language barriers or significant ethnic differences or those lied to by their traffickers, can be largely unaware or misled about their rights.

In light of understanding this victim mindset and the conditions under which they are abused, victims often exhibit more severe mental health problems. Many avoid eye contact or act fearful or anxious, as they can experience extreme paranoia, depression, anxiety and apprehension as a result of their enslavement. One study found that 91% of trafficking survivors surveyed experience severe nervousness, 85% are fearful, 95% feel depressed and 76% have little hope for the future. Research conducted in the UK on 133 trafficked persons, including 37 children, found that 39% of adults and 27% of children were diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), 34% of adults and 27% of children were found to suffer from depression, and 15% in total were diagnosed with schizophrenia. In addition to these mental health conditions, trafficking victims can suffer from anxiety and mood disorders such as panic attacks, obsessive compulsive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and major depressive disorder. Individuals of such traumatic histories of abuse and exploitation have heightened susceptibility to dissociative disorders, which lead to perception and memory distortions; one study conducted in Europe has found that 63% of survivors experience memory loss.

With the annual observation of the World Mental Health Day on October 10, we should not forget that while the innocent who were once enslaved, when finally found and freed, no longer suffer under the control and direction of their trafficker, they remain subject to an overlord of a different sort: poor mental health.